Tri Cheddar

One thing I love about cycling – and being so terrible at it – is that there are things you look at and say you can never do.

And then you go and do them.

You train, get better, learn more and engage your friends to help – and then things happen.

Never in a million years did I think I would be able to cycle up Cheddar gorge, the iconic geological landmark that I’m fortunate to live only 40 minutes away from.

It is steep, full of tourist traffic and I regularly see seasoned, skinny cyclists suffering as they grind away round the inclined bends formed by the historical and now underground, river.

Then I saw an advert for a triathlon being held in Cheddar. And I was on shore leave, so really I had no excuse.

There was a super sprint distance and a sprint distance, the latter including an ascent of Cheddar Gorge.

Me being me, I absolutely refused to wimp out and bypass the gorge. I figured the super sprint was barely worth me getting out of bed for. The fact that I can’t even run 5km at the moment was pushed firmly to the back of my mind…..

I became obsessed with the gorge.

I had only attempted it once, during the Mendip lakes and Lumps sportive and, on my gravel bike on a boiling hot day, didn’t get very far up the gorge before I resorted to walking like many others.

I knew I would have to train for this. I set about the watt bike at work on the Seven Atlantic, that fortunately has just had two watt bike atomx bikes installed. I set up Rouvy and downloaded the gorge route and almost immediately stalled on the first steep bend and could barely turn the pedals on the second.

Surely it couldn’t be THAT hard?! I mean, it said 20% in places but only for a few metres.

Somewhere in the back of my head, somebody told me that it wasn’t so bad in real life. Righto.

So I put a shout out on social media to see if anyone wanted to come and help me get up the gorge.

Almost immediately Andy Sparrow, a good friend and fellow caving instructor and keen cyclist, piped up and said he’d be delighted to come with me.

Christine and Andy

Now, Andy is no spring chicken but he also extremely deceptive and very capable. I was a bit worried he’d leave me for dust. Luckily Andy hadn’t been cycling in a while and he also lives at the bottom of the gorge. Admittedly this didn’t give us much of a warmup or lead in to the climb, but we met up and set off anyway, Andy continually picking up my bike with one hand in awe of its lightness.

On a damp, grey day we swung out into the bottom of the gorge, luckily with not so many tourists to navigate and the climb starts in earnest as you pass the entrance to Goughs cave.

On any other day or any other year in fact, I would only be here to go diving in Goughs. Access to the cave for cavers and divers has now sadly been rescinded but hope is on the horizon that we may be able to go back one day. Goughs is a beautiful dive, but the carry is a pest, so it’s always worth bringing along caving friends to help which is always a fun, social affair.

We passed Goughs and you get a small amount of relief on a gentle incline before it really starts to ramp up.

I was delighted to pass the rock gabions, as this was where I had dismounted and shamefully walked the rest of the way the previous year.

I locked onto Andy’s back wheel and ignored everything around me as I concentrated on keeping that rear wheel in the same place the whole way up. So long as I did that, I would make it. So long as Andy didn’t stop of course!!

We made it through the first ‘steep bit’ which is a very narrow and steep pinch point in the road. Always worried about meeting a car head on here, I kept out in the middle of the road so I could see further and also flatten out the ramp which was upwards of 15% incline.

A little reprieve after this, and the next one came soon. On the approach it looks steep but not too bad – then, once on the bend it just keeps going as you fight to keep the wheels turning. Desperate and with no cars coming, I stayed as far out to the right and the middle as I could to shave the steepness off the bend. Andy was growling and clearly having his own battle just in front.

Then, the ramp dropped away quickly. Phew. Just one small sting in the tail left as we passed Reservoir hole (you’ll note that my Mendip cycling routes are identifiable by cave entrances…) and we had made it up the steep part. I was ecstatic although I could barely speak.

The rest of the way was a gentle incline all the way up to the top of the Mendip Hills where we cut across Charterhouse and followed the triathlon route back to Cheddar on a 20 or so kilometre loop.

My French G.O.A.T mascot wearing his Cheddar Tri jersey, from Stolen Goat.

He wasn’t stolen, I bought him fair and square in Annecy.

The Cheddar triathlon loomed. It’s a long time since I got up early on a Sunday to do any kind of race or exercise or anything. Diving doesn’t count. It’s stressful on the body for sure but it’s not exercise as such.

I decided to camp in my van overnight down in Cheddar to save an early start. This was a bit of a mistake as, after a fairly uncomfortable night, I woke with my age-old back pain. There was nothing much I could do to fix it at this stage and whilst I can get away with swimming and cycling with back pain, running is unforgiving.

I checked my bike tyres, gave it a final wipe down and set up my kit in transition. I always like clean, tidy equipment when I go to the races; must be a hangover from my horse racing days – always be well turned out!

Transition is where you change from one sport to the next and there are lots of rules around it such as making sure you put your helmet on before touching your bike.

Transition area

I laid all my stuff out in the small space provided and racked my bike with its sticky numbers and made sure it was in the correct gear for setting off.

Waiting around for the swim is always annoying. We watched the first waves set off. I am always surprised at how many people attempt triathlons who can barely swim. Some are doing a very slow breastroke and some doggy paddle. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have a lack of confidence and ability in the water. But I needn’t have worried too much, as almost all of these people can run and they all finished way ahead of me.

My transition area

I filled my time with lying on the floor in the cubicle, trying to stretch my back out as it was threatening to spasm.

I have to try not to set off too fast in the pool as I learned a stark lesson in my first triathlon when I struggled to regain my composure on the bike and overshot a tight bend in the road. You can’t save much time in the pool in a sprint anyway so I kept it smooth and well under 10 minutes.

It was a cold day, so I grabbed a long sleeved jersey when I got to my bike and was glad I did. I set off trying to keep my heart rate down for the gorge ascent. Even though I had done it twice before now, I still doubted myself and plodded up through the steep hairpins. I felt slightly better as I saw one guy walking the narrows but also sorry for him – that could so easily have been me. Once you stop on a steep climb it’s extremely difficult to get started again.

Gorge accomplished, I set off across the chilly Mendips and made the most of the fast descents, taking a little care as they were still very wet from the weeks of rainfall we’d had.

Back at transition and trainers on, I knew it would be catastrophic. My back was stiff as a board and the right QL muscle was in full on spasm. Apart from being painful, it severely restricts my movement and gets worse when running. The spasm is so strong it pulls my pelvis out of alignment and the chiropractic sector has made a small fortune out of me since 2009, when my spine threw a herniated disc in the middle of kayak marathon training.

Grateful for support from my closest friends, Jo and Jayme who came along to offer encouragement.

Nothing I could do about it now. I half jogged, half waddled to the halfway point of the run, desperately looking for the right shaped rock to lie on. I found one and to the bemusement of the marshalls, rolled around on a pointy fist-sized stone, hoping to get the spasm to release and let me at least run a bit. It sort of worked, but by the time I got back to the finish line I was crippled. There is nothing more annoying than knowing you can run, but an injury is stopping you and the crowd are all cheering you on thinking you are just fat and slow. They have no idea how much pain I’m in or that my back is twisting me up so badly that I can’t actually stride out even though I wanted to.

I wasn’t even breathless, I could just hardly move.

So, I finished but yet again insanely disappointed in myself that my old back injury was plaguing me yet again. Would I ever be able to run pain free?

Instead of celebrating my achievements in that I had cycled up cheddar gorge in a triathlon – something I wouldn’t have believed if you’d told me a year ago – I just beat myself up for being so terrible at running. Maybe my body just isn’t designed for it. Short stocky people just don’t win triathlons, do they.

Not happy with just finishing, I wanted to be competitive. It wasn’t enough to be just happy not to finish last. But I drank some champagne anyway.

Something had to change.