2017 the 2nd Torino Nice Rally

This year's TNR feels very different to the last for many reasons. Physically it was more - longer, harder, faster, cooler. Mentally it was both more and less challenging.  In some cases we knew what was coming which made life - and planning food - easier. Other times we pushed ourselves to try new extensions and they were new to us and satisfying as we moved faster or harder, were better prepared and we came out of them in one piece.

TSK making new friends early on

On the whole we finished in a better state than we had last year - not so exhausted, still able to move all muscles and all nerve endings, tendons in tact.

What happened to us, or more specifically me, was a personal learning experience - an internal rather than externally influenced outcome. Yes I rode hundreds of miles through beautiful Alpine countryside. I climbed two score vertical kilometres (yes that's 20,000m) and rode back down them again as fast as I could and all in all enjoyed the whole thing more than I even expected to. It turns out you can go back to a race and come away more fulfilled.

What you can also do is be over 16 hours ahead of last year's schedule by day 3. You can use that to tackle one of the hardest hike a bike sections on the entire course when only one other person did and earn kudos from your peers in doing so.

It put us back onto our last-year schedule but then we added in more and the more was so enjoyable, challenging, so enlightening. We were all but alone. We were lucky that we bumped into 3 Italians who helped us along our way at the right time and then they stopped and we continued for 5 more hours. We slept well, ate well, survived happy, breakfasted, reinstated my coffee habit and finished 2 days later than last year, with more of the course complete, more of ourselves stretched and less fucked.

So what did I learn that was so special? That I am ready to race long distance bike rides again and that I am ready to do it on my own, not as a pair. That my own timeline and my own body clock is the most important thing to listen to and that I can organise myself, endure hardships, recover enough, take the right  breaks, adapt my body to life in the saddle and enjoy every moment of it with all my heart. I learned that the sounds of the wilderness keep me going and lull me to sleep when I am ready. I know that unbearable pain can usually go away, given time. Today I know that fatigue from intense effort only really happens after 9 days (at the moment) and even then, only when I stop.

I have seen respect in the form of a knowing nod across  room and it has led me to consider a distance racing future.

I  am more excited than you can know about what is to come. So I am finding it difficult to write about this TNR. it meant so much to me and yet it is just the start of a new chapter in a book, perhaps even a preamble to a sequel.

As I write it is 1am and we have just sat through 1 hr of M1 road works so tomorrow there will be
lie in and laundry and a lot of planning and the  the hard work will start - the prep, organisation, training, bike building and more training.

Things are about to get weird and if you're a friend of mine who lives some way away, you can probably expect a bicycle visit sometime in the next year.

The satisfaction of the finish line