Anatomy of a Race
Time of the day this article was written – 9am (GMT, actually I’m in St Lucia, doing what I call work, and it’s 4am here… which I’ll put down to jet-lag rather than any nocturnal anxiety); Kilos: 83 (minus 1 kg - the coming week’s not looking good though, what with after four square meals a day in a hotel primarily serving American-size portions… and OK, I’ll admit it, a buffet breakfast); Cigarettes: none, not even a reefer (well, it is the Caribbean); Alcohol units: lots, chilled lager and rum punches, mainly; Injuries: a tweak in my lower back, a recurrent issue returned, first from lifting heavy boxes, then from hefting my rucksack (reminder, I should get a wheelie suitcase…); Near misses on the steed: none, the titanium traveller is sitting happily in its rightful place on the sofa at home, relaxing for a week.
Out here in St Lucia It is impossible to do anything more than a little training on a static bicycle in the hotel gym, so perhaps it’s time for a little reflection, about the race, what it is and what riders get out of it. And, of course, some contemplation of the Caribbean Sea horizon. So…
Anatomy
45SW… Four alpha-numerics that give absolutely no sense of the enormity of the task they involve, all that graft on a bicycle, the rolling landscape of discomfort, taking you well beyond the initial enthusiasm of, say, an eight hour ride… down through dejection on Day 3 and Day 7 (quite usual in bike-packing apparently, and you need to give yourself a hard look in the mirror – less than half way in a race like this) and then into the outer reaches of grime, guts and determination, where endurance takes on a different guise. Of course competitors must sustain the millions of contractions in two weeks of muscle action, but they must look after themselves – cope with dehydration and lack of nutrition, with sleep deprivation and immune system degradation. They might even force themselves to overcome boredom.
So much Zone 2… but it forgets the climbing. 45SW has nine impossibly steep climbs, Tour(-de-France)-level summits; in a total of 53,000 metres of climbing in all.
Genesis
Andy Buchs, the course designer, who has enormous experience of long cycling races himself, started with a race called NorthCape-Tarifa: that’s a ride right down through Europe, 7400 kilometres from the north of Norway, overlooking the Barents Sea, to the southernmost tip of Spain. Ambitious. And a bit too ambitious for many riders (even moving at an extremely impressive 350km per day this distance takes more than three weeks). So he decided in 2018 to stage another race across Europe, ‘one that could be finished in 12 or 14 days’. And he chose another direction – South-West, see below. See more about Andy Buch’s races at Transbike-Adventures.com
Essence
45 Southwest is a bike-packing race. Plenty has been written about the subject, and doubtless there will be more to come, including by me, but in essence bike-packing involves self-assisted riding over very long distances (almost competitive cycle touring). No assistance crews (nor private followers, eg photographers) are permitted and in 45 SW there is actually very little course infrastructure (even the checkpoints are ‘open 24 hours a day’, ie unmanned – you simply take a selfie at the marker, post it to the organisers and you’re on your way). Riders are allowed to (have to) go to shops, cafes and restaurants, which must be publicly available services. They eat copious amounts of food of course, and recharge their tech. They even spend the night in hotels (to wash themselves, their clothes and to get a good recovery during a night’s sleep in a bed) though most nights they’ll be dossing down at the roadside for a few hours. And lastly they are trying to travel fast, using the bike-packing ‘luggage’ that is stream-lined, so there is barely a pannier in sight.
Character
The name 45 SouthWest comes from the direction of the wind across Europe at the time of the year. In that confusing manner, wind is named for its origin rather than where it takes you, and it arrives from 045 degrees, the north-east. Whoopee! It will blow us all the way to Tarifa. We’ll see... Another characteristic of 45SW reveals itself online: the trackers carried on each bicycle will create a swarm of dots making their way south-west through Europe.
It’s worth mentioning that 45 SouthWest is a ‘fixed course’ event, meaning that all riders must follow the same route, defined by the race organisers, rather than a route they pick themselves. Andy Buchs is quite firm in his view:
“In free-route events, riders often opt for major roads and rely on petrol stations for resupply, assuming this will help them move most quickly. It’s true, you can draft the vehicles, but you have to concentrate on the traffic and you get tired more quickly. On smaller roads, where you’re not surrounded by cars and trucks you can concentrate on the cycling. Also, in a fixed course event, participants ride the same track and have a higher chance of encountering one another. They experience the same surfaces, elevations, and available services, ensuring a shared adventure without missing out on interesting aspects along the route.”
Buchs’ idea is that whether you are out there to win, or to challenge yourself, you will emphatically have an adventure. His course will lead you to interesting places: he does his research around geographical, historical, and cultural areas that can make good checkpoints and he chooses routes that present riders with gems and surprises. He also confirms the course a month before the start, to cover any changes.
Dark Character
‘He likes a hill…’, wrote one former entrant the 7400km NortheCape-Tarifa. For non-cyclists, what this really means is that he likes a famous hill, one that might measure up in an event such as, say…, the Tour de France (the theory is that the course links these climbs with land which is flat and quick to ride…) There are eight climbs in 45SW… and with the course recently revealed, it’s apt to mention that the total climb is 53,000 metres… Luckily, in desperation, I have a plan.*
Back in St Lucia
It’s the Caribbean calm before the storm… As soon as I return I will be onto my late adaptations to the bike and final checks. James the Physio has been doing a valiant job, looking at the wreck and thinking of ways of getting around the issues, which have involved pressing here and there, and trying to loosen me there and here… We talk a bit of cycling as he prods and me and makes me stretch. At one point he alarmed me with:
“Oh, well then, it’s a back, crack and sack for you, mate…”
And I know I will be bombarded with more demands; xx and xx. Similarly my wallet will be bombarded: “Oh, just another few hundred pounds here and then there...”
Meantime, it has been four square meals a day. Sadly I cannot call it fat-loading as it is too early. However, I have had a magical moment. For the third time in 35 years of travelling and writing about the Caribbean I saw the Green Flash**. Oh, I’ll admit, someone who stares for long enough at the setting sun could persuade themselves that they saw anything. But, there it was, faint but definitely there, a tiny flash of green on the sea’s rim in the distance.
*A devilishly clever piece of mountain-bike kit, basically a massive cog and a tiny adapter on my rear wheel, giving me 25% more climbing power. It has as many teeth as a shark, so many you can barely count them… I will be jollying may way up the mountains…
** The Green Flash – every Caribbean devotee’s favourite ephemeral moment – on a completely cloudless sky, at the moment when the sun disappears, a green bar appears in its place on the horizon. I believe the theory runs that the refraction of the sun’s rays, through the additional stretch of completely clear atmosphere, slips beyond the yellow and red of the normal sunset into the next colour of the rainbow, green.