jongooligan
Legendary Member
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Post of the year. No, the decade. đź‘Ź
Jan 4 Perran and Aggie
I have no burning desire to go to Perranporth. I have a work ethic though. It is four days into January and I have not had a proper ride yet and we are going sailing in Thailand in ten days time and the pressure is there. Entirely self imposed. I try to explain it to Madame Crow but she doesn't get it.
"I have to do a 50k and a 100k ride every month this year".
"Why?"
I am unable to come up with a reason that will stand up to her sceptical scrutiny. Except that without this goal, I may not go out at all when it rains or is cold. That would be November to April then.
Yesterday when it was sunny and dry I tried to have a ride and this is what happened. A single, tiny thorn, one of thousands on the road after hedge cutting season.
The tyre was difficult to remove. The first inner tube went in and the tyre muscled back on. I broke the valve pumping it up. Tyre off again and a second inner tube. Pumped up again. Now the wheel would not go back on without rubbing the disc against the brake pads. An hour went past. My sister in law waved at me as she drove past. I got a text later 'You looked like a banana - all in yellow and bent over'. The people in the house whose fence I hooked the bike on, came out to check I was OK. They tell me it was the house which Roger Moore once owned as his holiday place.
None of this is helping so I went home, pushing the pedals manfully against the resisting brake pads. Only two miles but it felt further. In the garden I put the bike on the stand for a proper look. After another hour and a half of taking the wheel off and putting it on again I gave up and phoned Clive Mitchell's Emporium of Temptation. 'Bring it over, easy to fix'. Once there the mechanic found he could not get the wheel on either and asked me to leave it with him.
It felt oddly bereft being bike-less. Like leaving your partner in hospital and returning home. Madame Crow said I was being melodramatic. The sun shone, the solar fountain in our pond came to life, I kicked around the garden looking at the space in the shed where my bike used to be. I felt deeply frustrated. I was sure this would be the only sunny day for months.
The bike came home at the end of the afternoon, just as it was getting dark. The LBS guys had managed to get the wheel on and explained the problem but I could not follow the explanation. I worry now about the next puncture.
So today I needed to get off cycling but the weather has changed to drizzle and wind with the odd heavier shower. It is grey. It is not especially warm
So Perranporth it is, chosen because it has the least hilly route out of Truro and today I am feeling tired. From time to time I get bouts of acute anxiety and panic attacks and today was one of those days. So I knew this was going to be tough because I would be hyper vigilant about every threat or worry. Is my chest hurting because I am going uphill.....or am I dying? Laughable - unless you have been in the same position.
The light today is dramatic as the sun keeps breaking through and illuminates the wetness, lighting up droplets of rain on leaves, creating rainbows and fractal patterns on my glasses as I stare into the low winter sun. It is already afternoon when I leave. Legs feeling heavy and the bike has apparently lost it's lower gears overnight. I keep looking down to check that yes, it really is on the largest back cog.
I had programmed the GPS to do the route the other way round to the way I am going. I do this sort of thing a lot. The GPS is pretty unimpressed and alternates between sulking and flashing angry red lights. It doesn't do opposite ways or it might but I don't know how to tell it. I turn the route off - I know the way, probably. The lanes are as dirty as ever heading mainly uphill, up to the spine of Cornwall. More cars today on a Saturday but they all slow or wait for me and I wave cheerfully. There is barely space at times and at one point I have to get off and climb the verge with my bike so a van can pass. The driver smiles. Must be the banana outfit.
The hills feel tougher than normal and I am doing a constant self talk, calming my fears, ignoring the sirens of temptation from some inner part of my brain that worries about my heart, my lungs, the pains I can feel. It feels like cycling with the brakes on. It is exhausting battling the physicality of the hill and at the same time the mental challenge of dealing with the fears that drift like smoke into my consciousness and have to be ignored. I have been like this so many times over the years, catastrophising to the point where I will drive myself to A&E convinced I am about to die. I am not but some part of my mind is refusing to accept this. It feels real to me.
I can see Perranporth now. Downhill into the town with a view across the roofs as the houses run down the steep slopes to the beach. There is a rainbow appearing. A strong and complete semi circle and I am heading for the middle. I tell my fears that this is a sign that all will be OK and for a while it works. I sit on the same bench at the beach that I have sat on every time I have been here this winter. The Christmas crowds have gone so no one is feeding the gulls who mew angrily about it. The surf is big and messy and I can hear the waves breaking even up here.
Next stop is St Agnes if I am to do 50k today. 'Perran' and 'Aggie' as they are known here, are like two argumentative siblings who sit close but not too close to each other, each convinced they are the better of the two. Perranporth has the best beach, Aggie has the best surf. Perran has more shops, Aggie has better ones. Both are being colonised by Londoners looking for better prices than the uber trendy and expensive Rock and Polzeath up the coast. Perran is more welcoming to visiting surfers, the Aggie crew are notorious for being aggressive and territorial.
It is a pleasant ride up a gently sloping valley to St Agnes. You cannot see the sea and the valley is steep sided and wooded but the road is quiet. The hills are going more easily now. The fear level subsiding. I just want to keep going, hoping to outrun whatever it is that is frightening me, convinced that speed and distance will help. Or that the contemplative spinning of pedals will soothe me. I feel a constant pain in my gut where I have screwed up my muscles unconsciously. It makes deep breathing harder forcing rapid shallow breathing and a lack of oxygen, so aerobically I wobble up hills, focused on the summit and not thinking beyond it, crowding out the siren voices of fear and catastrophe with a single minded target of getting to the top.
There is a good downhill into the place where signs welcome you to St Agnes, but it's followed by an immediate 7% average hill up to the village centre. I am not sure of the way now but don't want to stop, so just keep making instinctive decisions based on half remembered landmarks until I find myself as planned heading out on the road to the coast. This road girdles St Agnes Beacon, a lump of metamorphosed shale that squats facing America and resisting the sea. The Beacon looms over the village and can be seen for miles. The views are extensive and the road elevated enough that you can see almost to St Ives to the south and up to Trevose Head near Padstow to the north. Even today where clouds are boiling up black and angry, there is enough light to see the dramatic north coast, headland after headland plunging into the sea.
It has been feeling hard pedalling on this elevated road and I blame it on my mental state but as I turn the corner to face north, I can feel the wind is now behind me and I am going faster and faster. A kind of madness comes. The roads tilts down and disappears but I cannot stop myself risking it all in a plunge down the hill, wind in my ears, leaning through the bends. This is what happens when I am in the grip of anxiety - it encourages an opposite reaction sometimes: a complete lack of self preservation. As if by moving quickly, I can leave the negative thoughts behind, unable to keep up. There are fortunately no cars today, no patches of grit, no potholes and I come to my senses as I hit the village outskirts again, having circumnavigated The Beacon.
Time to turn for home. More down than up on this part and my average speed creeps up. The fear levels have subsided, just a background rumble of undermining thoughts. The knots in my stomach remain. I drop onto the lower part of the bars and get the speed up to 24 mph on the rolling roads towards Truro. I know this route well now after my winter of cycling.
The landmarks pass. The rain comes and goes. Cars pass in a wet fuzz of headlights and spray. The last hill is painful, I still can't get my breathing right and my leg muscles protest at the lack of oxygen.
Home in the dying winter light. Hose down the bike. Shower. Tea and flapjacks. I like the rituals of coming home. I am glad I went out despite not wanting to, still driven by this self imposed target, this refusal to back down from something so arbitrary and pointless but which makes me feel I have achieved something. Even if is just a trail of electrons, a little less rubber on the tyres.
I know too that I have faced my fears and done what I wanted today and that is the sweetest victory of all.
Post of the year. No, the decade. đź‘Ź
