Rides: DNS, CBA

Didn’t even make it to the start of the Anglesey & Back.

Drove up the evening before, pitched tent, had a beer, fettled my kit etc and went to bed at 10ish. Spent the whole night awake or slightly unconscious, so when the alarm went at 4am I switched it off, fumbled with my phone to find a way to contact the organiser (surprisingly difficult, despite the copious amounts of information supplied) and eventually managed to get some sleep, before packing up and going home.

It’s not the first time this has happened and it won’t be the last. I have a bad record of DNSing when something goes wrong or my head just isn’t right, but it’s very hard to explain in a way that makes sense. For the vast majority of riders, being entered for an event guarantees they’ll start and the majority of those will finish, bar some unforeseen disaster. Not me.

Some examples:

• 2022 Burford Bumble 300 from Cardiff. No sleep.
• 2019 Old Roads & Drove Roads from Sparsholt. No sleep again. I’ve actually entered this ride three times and never once made it to the start. First time me and Baggy went to the wrong Sparsholt (there are two, not far apart) second time was in 2019 and in 2024 the weather forecast was biblical (large parts of the ride are on gravel tracks) so I bailed in advance, along with many other riders.
• 2019 12hr TT in Yorkshire. Started, but after two laps (about 50 miles) decided I was going too slowly and went home.

It’s not a great habit and these away-day rides are expensive in accommodation, fuel, food etc. None of that matters at the point where I pull the plug. I could have spent thousands and travelled hundreds of miles, but if I decide to quit, I quit good and hard with no shame or regrets.

The common element here is that all of the rides involved an overnight stay somewhere. I suspect that adds an element of stress. It’s extra stuff to deal with, although a stay in a cheap hotel isn’t exactly what most people would regard as hard to manage. It also means being away from Baggy, which I don’t like. Not that I cling to her like a teddy-bear (well, sometimes) but I feel lonely and exposed when we’re apart and that can easily destabilise me if there are other factors at play. Hotel stays (and now tents) aren’t always conducive to a good sleep beforehand. On a purely physical level, not having slept well shouldn’t stop me from riding. OK, I’ll probably feel a bit rough to begin with, but that will wear off quick enough, especially if there’s coffee at the start. But mentally, knowing I haven’t slept is an absolute ride-killer. That’s what did for me today and on two of the other rides mentioned.

Very likely I’d already checked out of this ride, subconsciously at least. I wrote before about pre-ride terror and I’d given serious consideration, even after the glory of a blistering back to the Smoke 400, to withdrawing. In addition the weather forecast for Day One was pretty horrible, with wind and rain blowing across our route. That plays on a chap’s mind. I hate riding in bad weather and don’t get a kick out of rides being epic, in anything other than distance. Throw in the lack of sleep and that was enough to tip me over. Would I have started if I’d slept? Hard to say for sure, but quite probably.

I don’t think I’m unique. Trawl the forums and you’ll find plenty of hardened audaxers clutching their bar-bags at the thought of a DNS or DNF for anything short of a dragon eating their leg, bike and home-made flapjack. And even then they’d hop 20 miles to borrow a spare. But there are a few lightweights like me, who need the stars to align, or at least be reasonably in synch, to pull off these rides. It is a kind of mental weakness, but it’s not laziness or cowardice or a deliberate choice. Sometimes, for whatever reason, your brain just says ‘nope, we’re not doing that’ and it’s very, very hard to bully yourself into doing the thing. If it was easy to ‘just do’ the thing, we’d all be an ideal weight, with dream jobs and lots of money, because we’d always make sensible and logical decisions to support our aims. I’d be 65kg dripping wet and faster than a greased weasel sliding down a drainpipe, rather than 83kg and trying really hard to shift the rest. Still as fast as a lightly oiled badger, but weasels are faster still.

So what to do? The best solution is company. If you’ve sunk into your own head, a voice from outside can snap you back to the real world and break the dark spell. But that’s not easy to arrange. I didn’t know anyone else on the A&B, so I couldn’t even ask someone to knock on the tent. For now I think I’ll be more circumspect about away-day rides and put more effort into preparing mentally, so I at least make it as far as the start.