Turbo 20 go Trekking to Top Locks

A sometimes sunny, sometimes cloudy, but always warm day attracted 50 riders to the shop today - and that was just those who hadn't gone to Lytham with John Hesketh or to Yorkshire with Wilko. We split into a variety of groups with the old A/B ride making a return thanks to Matt who took a group featuring Charlotte to Brindle. I would later see Charlotte en route to town to pick up a new phone (now for the results brought to you by.........) but for my part I went on a 20-strong ride headed by Stefan who took us round the Ironman bike course, though the star of the show would undoubtedly prove to be John "pain face" Farrington who apparently had the best bike ever created, the Trek Madone. It's even inspired him to do a three countries ride sometime in the not too distant future, but I'll leave it to him to plug that one. Stefan's group left the shop on cue, beginning with Dark Lane.

PERFECT ARMY MENTALITY FORMATION THIS - AND NO PINK SOCKS TO BE SEEN

I set off on the left side of row 4 next to David Rodgers who seems to be enjoying the Sunday rides more with every passing week, as well as discussing the Tour. I'll be the first to admit I did other things like watch a car race and get a new phone this afternoon in town but I'm sure the beers went down well. We were held back at the beginning of the descent but soon picked up speed and swept past the B group on the run to the Hoscar moss. Here, a bit of late braking threatened to disrupt the peace as did the myriad of road ridges and potholes but no tarmacs ended up on the Tarmac and we could power on towards the end of Wanes Blades Road with Hodgy calling for a first change on the front. This we duly got at the right turn towards Hunter's Hill, a climb which is always stomach churning at the best of times never mind when you know that Chopper Man has Everest'd it and you have White Van Man making an early bid for the reject award by shouting "SINGLE FILE" Geez, get over yourself..............Surprisingly it took quite some time for any attacks to begin here but Alex served notice of his intent to contend all day as the Rigbye arms appeared and we only did a rolling recovery (as in no stopping and me whinging "eat more carrots", I'll let Charlotte add the unpronounceable vegetables) before finally coming to a near standstill at the end of High Moor Road. From here the course no longer goes to Wiggo Corner, but instead goes up to a church where I got a bit too distracted by the lady cyclist parked at the junction (sorry Hodgy she's too young for you mate) and then we turned left at the Wrightington crossroads which took us on a brief northerly run before a switch right through some trees led us to Heskin Green. At the top the pack shuffled again just as we were treated to the sight of the Manchester to Blackpool riders coming the other way. This led Stefan to comment that it looked more like a stag do than a bike ride, not least because of how slow some of them were going (10mph, on the flat? I do the Southport Parkrun at a better speed). It was quite a while before we turned left towards the new development of homes in Coppull where apparently there used to be a pub, and one homeowner even had the old pub sign on his door! Best Ironman refill stop ever, no doubt. Anyway we weaved through these twisty lanes before coming out at the Thyme and Plaice pub and this signalled the start of plenty of flatland fireworks all the way to Adlington.

IF YOU DON'T KNOW HOW OR WHEN TO USE THAT PHONE I'LL HAVE IT

Once onto the Coppull road the pace cooled somewhat meaning that we'd leapt out of the blocks firing and were now paying for it, much like I do on every training session (I don't even have a day off before a Sunday ride, must do five miles of hashtag beastmode running before breakfast). So the ride dropped in intensity for the next few miles, but THE ARM would soon be required because another white van appeared at the White Horse pub roundabout. Now this guy was markedly more cheerful towards us as at least he didn't shout at us but he was on his phone! I didn't even have a working phone today, and I'm one of the few with long enough arms to do selfies on the bike. Ye gods. As we reached the Adlington traffic lights I realised we'd completed the first flat segment in under an hour and that the next 20 or so miles would take considerably longer. This was obvious even before the split at the top of the next climb where a few escapees bucked the trend of breaking away through traffic and somehow not needing a piss stop (this being a favourite water the flowers point on previous rides, maybe they were still pissed off at my FB comments about the lengthy time spent at the roman road feed station). Anyhow the breakaway were soon reeled in and despite the best efforts of two wayward cyclists on the reservoir road to throw us off balance, it was time for the "zen out" moment, Belmont.

SO THAT'S WHY MATT WANTED TO DITCH THE A/B RIDE - LOOK WHERE ALEX IS NOW

As we began the Big One we passed a few leisure riders but John Farrington had already got into his pain face mode even before Stefan passed the two of us just before the right hand bend. Here, he briefly turned off to have a chat with some of those on the A/B ride waiting for their comrades at mini-Belmont (as in where the burger can used to be) but with no horse meat in a bun to save the day for me I passed Pain Face and had a good chat with Steve on the Giant TCR. It's fair to say he's gone in a different direction to our resident roofer with his bike choice and I particularly like his Giant climbing wheels, but I eventually made 6th place my own as I crested the summit, the top five having long gone - one if them being Alex, who you would think had been riding with the club for years. On the descent I took it easy so as not to blow a grand's worth (or the deposit for Steve's TCR) of work over the next two days and parked up sixth and very content to shovel down a banana, but then I noticed how big the group had become. It turned out that the A/B riders had got bored of Anglezarke and came with us over Belmont! Eventually we assessed the situation properly and this enabled me to set off first up the road onto the long rolling stretch to Tockholes.

THEY SAW HIM YOLOING AND THEY BOTTLED IT

I only got a couple of miles out front on the restart but strangely given how rubbish my general pace was today, the Madone Man noted a few times that I was pulling the group apart. I took this as desperate irony that really 21mph is terrible and that we should all be going far faster than that but I think the more likely reason on reflection is that he wanted to test out his speed machine on the descent to stop JP from STRAVAIZING this segment where we reached speeds of over 40mph despite a few spits of rain in the air. Subsequently the run through Abbey Village was relatively sedate only for Mystery Green Dolan Man to rip it up once more on the final ascent before the M65 roundabout. This is where we saw someone YOLOING a bit early and sure enough, Steve's bottle took home the reject award because it jumped clean out of his cage! I don't get to see the make or model of either the bottle or cage but it was  a miracle that no one ran over it. So we continued onwards to Top Locks via the back of Brindle where we saw a few other cyclists enjoying the IMUK course a bit more than I would approve of given that the big one is only a week away (I guess that's what you call tapering) but we powered onwards and ever quicker leading some to shout at the green Dolan man "twenty is (NOT) plenty" especially as it's going to be a lot easier for Roof Man to do that over 170 miles on his three countries challenge. I guess that's what you call 9 series, Project Sub-9. The pace actually reached 32mph just before the lights at Whittle-le-Woods where my teammate in the A group Beer Festival Tourists Division, Danny Shearer, pulled alongside me and we actually saw each other for the first time in ages on actual bikes and not with a pint of real ale each.   He put in quite a shift on the uphill run to Top Locks where we went right then left towards the church. That pretty much did it for the climbs but the fast stuff was still to come - and what a clash of styles it would prove to be.

STOP TELLING ME WHITE LIES AND GET BACK ON THE HIGHWAY TO HELL

As we approached Buckshaw Village JF was at it again, leaving me to think about the discussion I'd been having with Hodgy about the Wigan total fitness spin class playlist including Meat Loaf and a bit of AC/DC. He mentioned a band I'd never heard of, White Lies, but then again I would spot their flyer later in town. At the traffic lights the Madone and his teammate on the front escaped leaving us staring at a highway to hell just to catch him. He was held up at the lights over the big junction so the group reformed once more. We proceeded onwards to Flag Lane where the race route takes you down some very small back roads where a lot of time can be gained or lost with a bit of forward thinking. At the end we once again saw Manchester-Blackpool riders, these going even slower than before, leaving me to wonder if they would make it back or get swept away by the tide (or as was suggested maybe get lost in the dark because the lights had been switched off). Next up for us was Croston which required us to go down one of Stephen Nelson's favourite beast mode stretches but he was conspicuous by his absence today and instead we rolled into the village as a tight unit putting in big efforts on the front to make it home for the target time of 1pm. I had thought of turning off and going to the Vodafone in Southport to do the phone upgrade but decided that wouldn't be the right thing to do and instead stayed as we made our way through the back of Wrightington down some roads I know little about before finding our feet at Bentley Lane, and the side of Hunter's Hill which signals the start of Lap 2. A brief scare at the common nearly got one rider run over by Mini Driver but next up on the front were me and Alex. That meant only one thing; YOLO TIME!

A IS FOR AUSTRIA, ALL ATTACK AND ALL-SINGING ALL-DANCING

As we began the run to the Hoscar Moss Stefan shouted "left for home or straight on for the cafe" Now I'm guessing some must have plumped for strawberry tarts (cough cough) but for once I wasn't one of them; I was on a mission to get home for the Austrian Grand Prix and as such only mounted a feeble 26mph attack on the start of everyone's favourite YOLO segment shouting "we should be going MUCH faster than this". Predictably Alex's approach of doing twice as many pedal strokes in his 50x13 trumped my obsessive 52x11 and he was up the road with his dad in no time at all, leaving me to pick up the pieces with Howie and a few others just as two work colleagues of mine, one from Austria, came the other way! They're determined to at least get to B group standard before joining and with clip-in shoes they might just be there already. You'll hear more from them especially when they beat JP to the A group but for now only six were left, some having turned off for home, as we began the final few miles down Dark Lane where Stefan was non-committal about my thoughts that Alex had been banned from eating chocolate and was getting organic carrots for tea every night. Either way I've no idea where this sudden surge of speed has come from but it held out all the way over the crest of Greetby, where surprisingly no egos were desperate to steal one last win. So we rolled into town together and went our separate ways, me battling with the traffic before lobbing the bike in the garage and having the quickest turnaround ever (I even ate my lunch walking down the road and the run to the 22 club finished me off) but it was worth it to enjoy a few beers while watching a fairly insipid Austrian GP which at least brought a third man into the picture for the championship. After that I jumped the train into town where an all-singing, all-dancing show was underway near the Vodafone store and I got to hear their playlist of three songs repeat for an hour in between getting my new handset and using up my John Lewis tea and cake voucher (the hot drinks were done for the day but they allowed me to have a bottle of orange juice and a raspberry meringue slice, what a choice that was). I collected the new phone and relaxed on the journey back to Ormskirk having enjoyed a grand day out. Well in Stefan and Alex, one for stepping forward to take the ride, the other for marking himself out as a future Rick Taylor.

Now for the results, brought to you by my new handset, the Sony Xperia X:

Distance: 100.91km
Time: 3:13:16
Average Speed: 30.54kmh
White Vans: 2
Hors Cat Climbs: 2
Horses: 3
Cookies Eaten: 3
Cost of Fuel: 48p for cookies, £10.50 for beer and zero for the juice and cake in town

REJECT OF THE RIDE: Steve's Bottle
(It's still out there in a gutter if anyone doing IMUK next week wants to steal a refill)

Okay then, seven days to go. You've put all that work in, been on the floor puking up after that last effort so many times and gone on a diet of raw uncooked organic vegetables and supercharged coffee for nine months. Prove your mettle next week and collect the reward!