Jason Miles takes a good long look at himself. With his eyes half shut…
Someone told me the other day (hopefully at least slightly in jest) that everything I’ve ever written for Singletrack has followed a certain formula. That being: “Got up really early, rode for 1,000 miles, pooed my pants, fell asleep face-first in a bag of chips.” Or something like that.
My first reaction was that while I have, from time to time, written about the often grim, cacky underbelly of riding mountain bikes, I can’t remember scraping that particular barrel as often as this shouty, rent-a-gob individual had so publicly asserted.
But, on reflection, there’s probably some truth in the claim that my words have often descended into vivid descriptions of unpalatable themes involving poo, wee, open sores, nerve damage and vomit. The last Big Bicycle Adventure I was involved with featured all of those things. In fact, almost all those things arrived at the same time and thus ended that particular ride.
Thirty solid hours of rain, eight hundred miles of hilly Scottish roads, sleeping in a bin bag while trying to actually go quite fast to keep up with/beat everyone else ended on a ferry heading in the opposite direction to the route, wearing borrowed clothes via a mate’s kitchen in Belfast. The poo, wee and vomit stuff had happened in the dark a few hours earlier than that, thankfully.
But anyway, it’s been pointed out to me that I’ve got some kind of bodily fluid fixation and now I’m aware of it I’m thinking that you’re all probably getting a bit bored of it so I’ve been racking my brains trying to think of something more wholesome to prattle on about.
I couldn’t think of anything, sorry.
Then I remembered the helmet I was wearing when I did that last ill-fated bike race. It’s a helmet that I don’t wear too often – in fact I bought it specially for a UK 24-hour champs race a few years back. I needed a new lid and this particular one is rather light and at the time I was going through an acute weight-shaving phase. It was bloody expensive too.
I was doing some crazy stuff to lose weight from my body (none of it dangerous or illegal, just getting a bit obsessed with broccoli and cold showers). I was doing the same to the bikes I was planning to ride and the clothes I was going to be wearing. It all adds up, but before anyone points out that I could just have a good poo before the race starts, 1) yes, I did that as well, and 2) you won’t trick me into talking about shite again quite as brazenly as that, sonny.
I was saving this lovely, light, shiny helmet as some kind of Sunday best, which is ludicrous really, but there you go. Pulling nice things out of the cupboard especially for big occasions helps me get into the right frame of mind for a bit of a ding-dong just as much as a good night’s sleep or a last-minute pep talk from a coach.
As it turned out, I dropped out of that race quite easily. I still can’t explain why I did to this day, which makes me suspect that I couldn’t really be arsed with it. Still, quite a disappointment.
I took the same helmet to another 24-hour race a few months later. This race was an even bigger deal, but that didn’t stop my rear tyre getting ripped open on the first lap and the entire chasing pack riding past. Those of you with any experience of getting a Schwalbe tyre reseated on an ENVE rim once an inner tube has been inserted might be nodding sagely when I say that about 20 minutes of grunting and swearing followed before any cycling could recommence.
I wasn’t blaming the helmet until a similar thing (OK, the exact same thing) happened at the next race. I was wearing that helmet again.
Then another race and guess what? Yes. Another rear tyre problem. And what was perched atop my shiny bald head? You can probably guess that part as well. I did other big rides and some racing without that cursed helmet and things went perfectly well. I’m saying ‘cursed helmet’, because by then I was starting to firmly believe that a mischievous spirit had possessed this polystyrene hat. (If someone can sell a million books and make a Hollywood movie about a haunted Plymouth Fury car I’m sure I can claim in a bike mag that my helmet is haunted.)
I’m not going to use that haunted helmet again.
Now I have a lucky helmet, lucky shoes, lucky gloves and lucky shorts. All my bikes are lucky already but if I start to have another run of crappy results, you’re probably well-advised to avoid anything I might list on eBay…