Irish Boys on Tour

This blog update will be pictureless I'm afraid, as the any available pictures cannot be found by a man of my limited talents. So please try and keep attentive even without all the brightly coloured pictures children. Last weekend I joined my provincial brothers Eddie Dunbar, Stephen Shanahan and Dylan O'Brien to pedal our bikes around Wales. The weekend got off to a bad start almost immediately, when the in-house communication between teammates broke down. I was set to be collected in Carrick at "six", which I interpreted as 6pm, as in tradition, Team Munster's policy is to arrive at races later rather than sooner, when in truth it meant 6am. It was probably the best wake-up call I have ever gotten though, I basically jumped out of bed and landed in my socks. I packed like I was late for mass and we hit the road, hard. Whilst Dad was getting me to Rosslare in under 60 minutes, I was too busy lamenting over all the non-essential essentials that I had forgotten. Turbo Trainer? No. Energy Powder? No. Towel? No. Boxer shorts? Hell no. But I made up for all this foolishness by packing three arm-warmers. Even my bike was still dirty. All the things that I had in my head to do all day were prematurely cast aside. And it wasn't like I could borrow gear from my "fun-sized" teammates Dunbar or O'Brien. A cloud of shame fell over me as my bike was secured on the roof of Tom Shanahan's car, not only was it still dirty going to a race, but rather more 'fred-ishly' I still had my saddle-bag attached. Had this been an Irish race, I'd have lost serious respect points. But in Wales, I had no respect to lose. I had breakfast aboard the ferry, which included a severely moreish croissant. We then had 210 minutes to kill, the vast amount of which was filled by me, saying "Oh yeah, I forgot my .... as well."

Each time we stopped along our journey to 'Cwmbran', the search for free WiFi was on. Once the WiFi situation was sussed, then began the search for food. We were pretty much like cavemen, if cavemen had access to WiFi way back when. We had yet to find a good radio station, and by good, I mean a station that played 'Macklemore'. The race HQ of 'Ebbw Vale' was on the way to our home away from home, so it would have been stupid of us not to check out the sign-on and the time-trial course. The word time-trial was used loosely to describe the course. It took me around 9 minutes 30 seconds to reach the foot of the final climb. The run in to the climb was fast, I was averaging 35-40 mph for the majority of it, but then when I came upon the climb that very much changed. The only way I could describe the final climb to those in my area would be like 'Seskin Hill', but exposed to the wind. It was like a ladder put there by the devil, with naught but his evil sheep for company. Over there the sheep don't go "Baaa!", instead it seems they go "Haaa!", mocking you.  For the first time in my cycling days, I got scared going up a hill. I was crawling in the 39x25, and yet it was scary to think that riders could go up this in the big ring. Unlike 'Seskin' though, those kind of hills are a dime a dozen over there. Motorway drags are a rare occurrence from what I can see. All the drags over there have escape lanes into sand traps for runaway vehicles. Our neutralised zone for 2 of the 5 stages consisted of a long descent, with the group regularly hitting 40 mph. By the bottom of the descent I had to tighten the quick release on the brake calipers, as about 2mm had worn off them. The peloton was like a giant sea, ebbing, flowing, crashing, flicking from left to right. No one rider moving without taking others with him. Constantly moving, lengthening, shortening, widening and thinning out.

Stage 2 looked like a hard one, the final climb on paper looked pretty testing. 8 miles into the stage came the first crash. It happened of the left-hand side of the road and flicked over to the right, and in doing so, took 4 spokes out of Eddie's rear wheel. My intentions in this race weren't set in stone, but Eddie's were. Highest overall placing possible. I stopped and swapped my good rear wheel onto his bike and pushed him off, all the while he was imploring me to "Look at my hand!" In his haste to get the wheel out he pierced his hand with one of the snapped spokes. The contusion was a good couple of inches long. I waited to get service myself and then set off, but to stop again 300m later to reset my brake calipers which had been knocked out of place. I now had a 2 minute gap to close up, on a bunch that had averaged 48 kph in the first hour. But they must have averaged 50+ kph in the second half hour, as I was doing over 50 kph for 33 kilometres before I caught them again. And when I caught them we were on the Welsh B-roads, lined with short steep climbs that set a deep burn in your thighs. I did not make it to the final climb with the main peloton, my excursions in the cavalcade had left me drained and dehydrated. I didn't drink enough whilst on the bumper of the car, but sweated a lot. The final climb to the line was again steep and again made harder by the mocking of Welsh sheep. It was 6km long, with the first 3km at about 8-10%. It then levelled off to about 6% for 2km and then kicked up steeply for the final 1km to the line. I haven't yet looked at my Garmin file to see the accurate percentages, but I think it would just give me nightmares anyway.

I didn't sleep well that night. Maybe it was because I was dehydrated, or maybe it was because the air in our room had been replaced by pure methane. I'm pretty sure there's now a hole in the ozone layer above the Premier Inn in Cwmbran. Stage 3 was only an hour long, but a circuit race, so the hour-mark would be a welcome sight at the end of it all. A turbo trainer would have been useful to warm-up with, but a good night's sleep was what I really needed. My concentration levels were shot, I fell asleep in the car on the way to the start. Double British Champion Chris Lawless won the stage in an intimidating display of power. Once I went out the back I essentially did a time-trial, keeping it at a set heart-rate and catching lapped riders, so even though I went out the back I moved up ten places on GC. 81st place is a real thing to shout about. 3 stages down, 2 to go. Stage 4 was a flat stage, with two long dual carriageway sections. I wanted to get into a breakaway as my race so far was less than fruitful. But my legs in the first 20km were very sluggish and slow to react. The top end power came back after 20km but the break had gone and had 40 seconds. I wasn't going to bridge a 40 second gap so I wasn't happy to have missed the move. A very boring and uneventful spin along dual-carriageways later the stage was over, and the magicians of Team Munster managed to get 5 bikes onto a roof rack built only to take 3. Chapeau, in the words of Kelly. We got back to our farmyard/room and set about town, to find a restaurant of cyclist proportions. And boy what a find we made. A restaurant called 'Harvester' turned out to be so much more that it seemed. Their dinners were cheap on price, but not on flavour, and an all-you-can-eat salad bar meant pasta was aplenty. Free re-fills on drinks and free WiFi were the icing on the cake. If they opened in Ireland they'd clean up completely. We got home just in time to miss Nicolas Roche's Vuelta stage win. I slept much better that night, we were set to tackle Tumble Mountain. A gruelling 7km climb, with an average gradient of 8% and a maximum of 15% it would suit the people light of the growth hormone. We were told to expect the main group to be 3 riders strong at the halfway mark, but no such thing happened. I don't even recall the second KoH. Damn near all the riders that set off made it to the base of Tumble in the group and then steadily went out the back one by one. Once again I set off at a pace I knew I could hold without blowing up and caught dropped riders on the way up the slope. The race was run, winners were crowned and volunteers thanked and thanked again. A little bit of happiness crept over the scene at the top of the mountain, when Eddie proclaimed that today was the first time he got his arse kicked all year. If getting your arse kicked means coming 5th overall then I'm stuck for words.

We then had 12 hours to kill until our ferry departed for home. Most of which was spent laughing at Beavis and Butthead (Dylan and Stephen) as they talked in code. And the question that was asked of us everyday from the moment we joined forces still remained. It seems as though it will always remain within the ranks of Team Munster, no matter which riders come and go in the future and no matter how the race is panning out for us. It is the eternal question - "Lads, do ye want any fruit?"

I feel as though we owe a great debt of gratitude to Tom and Kevin for their work over to get us to this race, and especially over the course of the weekend. We weren't 4 lads and 2 men, we were 6 Irishmen, taking Wales by storm and having a whale of a time doing so.

Until next time,

Seán.

PS, Here are my top tips for doing anything in Wales.

• Listen only to Kiss FM 101.
• Assume that all hills will be requiring a maximum front gearing of a 39 ring.
• Do not attempt to pronounce any Welsh words, try quietly in your head if you must.
• Welsh sheep aren't as tough as Irish sheep, they will happily relinquish their ground to you.
• It is imperative that your brakes are in good condition, whether it be the brakes on your car or bike. They will be needed!
• Eat at Harvester, only at Harvester. And smother everything in their Hot Chili Sauce.
• Don't worry if you're hard of hearing and want to watch Mrs. Brown's Boys, the Welsh kindly run it in English as well as having English subtitles.
• If you don't understand what a Welsh person says for fear of their accent, it is acceptable to say 'what' at most twice.
• Downhills are your friend, hit them flat-out all the time. And remember, the faster you go, the less likely you are of crashing!
• Respect the Welsh terrain, it will break you before you break it.