A man with the full breadth of 3 Peaks experience, Alan Crossjunkie Dorrington has contributed many a time to this blog, and is a great training partner for me throughout the year. His 2012 blog of the event is familiar to readers of this blog over the last ten days – it was an emotional day out there.
A quiet, grim mood seemed to grip all as the field hit the saturated bogs of the lower slopes of Simon Fell. There was almost no joking and chatting like in previous years – mostly an eerie silence among the riders. This soon gave way to greater anxiety as little tasters of the wind arrived from the left before morphing into a feeling of full survival mode by the top as the 50mph plus winds threatened to tear everyone’s bike from their grasp, and throw any stumbling bodies after them for good measure. It was the same for all, though I claim a little special place in the insanity for riding with deep section wheels that turned my bike into even more of a sail. Muppet.
