Las Vegas Institute of Sport

3 Peaks Cyclocross 2006 - Leon

The three peaks is an annual race over the Yorkshire Peaks of Ingleborough, Whernside and Peny-y-Ghent. It's a cyclo-cross race, which means drop bars, big skinny wheels, and no suspension. It also means you end up carrying your bike most of the time, both up hill and down dale.

It might only last about 4 hours, but there's no doubting it's a proper endurance event. For a start, about 90% of the riders are northeners, the last 6 events have been won by a fell runner, and the feedzones give out black pudding flavour energy gels.
It's the sort of event you need to be properly prepared for, so I wasn't best pleased to be phoning around Accrington bike shops the day before trying to locate a new cassette.

My race started well enough; the beginning of the first ascent is key due to a bottleneck, so a high position in the 200 strong bunch is essential. My old roady skills came back to me, and I was quickly up in the front 30 or so of the group. Judicious use of elbows meant I stayed there. Unfortunatly just before the crucial bottlenck my gears started slipping (damn that last minute cassette change). In no time I was at the back and walking across the cattlegrid along with the other 270ish who didn't get a good position in the bunch.

Ingleborough is the worst. Within five minutes my back, calves and achiles were burning. My facial muscles were gurned out. Every time the gradient eased enough I was cycling or pushing my bike just to give my back a rest. At least what goes up must come down, right? Sadly, it was a descent too much for my weedy cross brakes (and everyone elses I suppose. I think the brakse on cross bikes are just to make them road legal, they don't seem to do a whol lot of braking). Going down it was my hands and forarms that burnt just trying to keep the bike at a speed that the wheels and forks could handle.

Come the bottom, a quick tweak of the gears, and I was off on nice road section to recover on. This really is one race that would be harder if it was shorter, as the road sections are the only place you can really get any rest at all.

Whernside was more of the same - staggering up the side of a bloody big hill, and then splitting the descending between running sketchily over loose rocks and hanging onto the bars for grim death. It really does hurt this. And so another road section and on to Pen-Y-Ghent.

Pen-y-Ghent is unusual in that you come down the same way you go up, so unless you happen to be winning you are having to dodge out of control cross bikers hurtling down the hill while you are slowly, slowly turning the pedals. This is probably the most rideable of the three, but that still means about 50% rideable.
Once you hit the bottom there are just a few more road miles to the finish. I attacked the small group I was in, and shook them all off apart from one. I finished to a huge cheer from the entire Lancashire contingent of my family, and I got a special mention as I'd come all the way from Las Vegas (ahem). All the way through I was questioning why anyone would do this event. Now I'm already thinking about next year, how I can get under the four hour mark, how I can make the bike a bit lighter, how I can train specifically for pain and misery...