Asics Off Road Series – Wildman
Saturday 21st January 2012
Format: 10km run, 18km cycle ride, 5km run
Venue: Hankley Common
Present: Just Malcolm & Kit
Through the preceding week I didn’t believe I was going to be able to make this one, awaiting parts to make my bike serviceable, and suffering a sore knee myself. Finally got everything sorted on the Friday, and committed to enter on the day. I shouldn’t have done.
We arrived, parked, ambled down to register, then trekked over to the transition to site our bikes. Memories of past events here flooding back, Malc having had a puncture on the first lap a couple of years back, freezing cold the year after, and me having somersaulted over my handlebars into a very deep puddle next to transition. Thankfully this time it was much milder, and I smiled to see that the large puddle was nowhere to be seen.
I was limping a little, but put this down to the car journey, we opted to walk around a little, giving me a chance to loosen up whilst taking in the landscape. Transition set in a large bowl with the run climbing out and around one side, and the ride heading off over the other side.
This season’s team policy has been to start from the back, Malcolm was keen to push the limits of this by staying as long as possible, wrapped up and warm in transition. Tempted to wait here until the others had set off, this appeared to antagonise the marshals, so we wandered out at the last minute and tagged on the back. Staying slow and sensible up the first climb, banking left at the top to follow the crest of the bowl for a while, then dropping down a gulley. 
This is where my day went wrong, hugging the inside of the corner into the gulley, but finding myself high up the bank as the gulley fell steeply away below, no hesitation, plunged off the bank to land in the soft sand below, taking the impact on my left leg, protecting the damaged knee of the right, all seemed ok until I took my next stride and something clicked in my knee, lighting up the pain as it did so. My first thought was to stop, but what would be the point? Decided to push on and see how it panned out. Turning at the bottom of the slope, to turn and climb back up. Climbing wasn’t so bad, limping as I did so. Malcolm reappeared at my side, slightly dirty, it transpired that he had followed my line into the gulley, but tumbled down, creating mayhem as he did. He responded to my slower pace, noticing my limp and asking how I was doing. If I could complete lap one, then I could do two, the cycling shouldn’t be too bad, and even if I had to walk lap three this would be preferable to scoring a “did not finish”. Pain is temporary, failure lasts forever!
Thankfully the run was on much more gentle terrain than usual, and we were completed the two laps to transition, albeit quite near the back of the pack, oops.
Malcolm, as usual, was much quicker through transition than me, and the ride started as usual – Malc screaming off at full tilt, like some crazy coyote, with me resigned to keep him in sight and rein him in in my own time.
As I had hoped, I was more comfortable on the bike, and set about my task of rejoining Malc, but something was wrong, my bike wouldn’t settle on a gear and stay there. The shifting cable was at the end of its life, changing gear at the handlebar seemed to have little or no effect on the derailleur, until a little later, when it would make a half shift, the chain jumping the teeth. The only thing I could do was to minimise my shifting, which of course loaded up the pressure on my legs, and exploit the downhill and more technical sections.
I finally caught Malc and we settled into our ride together. There is a point where one section of the ride circuit touches the course looping back towards home, and here I recognised an oncoming competitor whom we would normally pass on the bikes, I was shocked on reaching this same spot further around my lap just how far ahead he must have been. Despite passing many cyclists, we weren’t doing too well.
Next I lost Malc, he just disappeared off my back wheel. I slowed, kept looking back and trying to see him. He eventually came back, having tumbled down one of the sandy downhill sections, but all ok.
Transitioning back onto foot was painfull, and I did walk quite a lot of that last lap, but we finished. I haven’t even looked at the results to see just where we came, or how long we took. I know I have never seen so many bikes on the racks at the last transition though, and we only got slower after that.
Thank you Malcolm for sticking by me, I did urge him to run on and leave me, as I knew I would be ridiculously slow, but ever the good team mate, he stayed and helped me through, or enjoyed my suffering.
Next event in this series will be “Tuffman” taking place at Pippingford, on the 4th February. This one is notoriously the revenge of the MTB’er, with a far more technical course, but sadly I have a prior engagement, so look forward to “Trailman” at Eridge Park.
