With the music booming and the women plentiful, Myles McCorry worries for those around him
With tar melting on Glengesh Pass and having eaten too many bags of crisps in recent months, Cuchulainn CC’s Myles McCorry is literally stuck to the road. He focuses on getting up the unforgiving slopes by wishing a scratchy disease into the shorts of Ras rider and route planner Stephen O’Sullivan.
Stage 6: Buncrana – Killybegs 134kms
I really tried to look like one of the pros this morning going into sign on, wherever it was. There was a bunch of teenage girls ogling the tanned bikers and I tried to blend with the Dutch squad. Walking tall, looking fit. Then I fell over a wall.
This started the 'What am I playing at head'. I put loads of winter kms in, wore out a turbo; all to just delay the guys doing the stage timing. The negative thoughts weren't helped by how tender the legs were this morning; lots of muscle damage.
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The morning massage usually works out the lactic and I ride it out in the first 10km. Not today. I took a gel at 5km - 5km is desperate; desperate like putting the pin back in a hand grenade.
Even into a block headwind we managed to cover 46km in the first hour. Mental. Attacks trying to soften the opposition only soften those at the back- the following sheep; me. Baaa.
I pressed on over the first climb where the peloton splintered like a china cup. Bodies looking broken everywhere. And we pressed on hard, in the class heat, over the unforgiving dead roads to the big climb of Glengesh Pass.
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Stephen O’Sullivan, like everyone who works for the race, gave up his own time to design this year’s course. I'm sure it took weeks using his experience to design a competitive route. On Glengesh I looked at him in my group with feckin’ misery. It was he who made me ride this wall. On the steep first section I wished a scratchy disease into his shorts. On the hairpins I imagined his fingers caught in a door. It was savage. The melted tar and those crisps I ate every Sunday night meant I was actually stuck to the road.
Pedalling motion turning square now. Slowly churning the 25 sprocket so hard your legs feel like an emptying bouncy castle. The struggle was helped by familiar faces - so always cheer at a bike race, we can hear you.
Over the top, with the race gone, we got a group going and rode in amazing heat. The Ras can be terrible in the rain, but Donegal at 25 degrees is a little bit of heaven; five bottles, four gels and a can of coke were needed to survive.
Unreal to those men who raced the final 40km. We just rode it. And to a man, pro, wannabe and plumber - we were still busted. But a bad day at the Ras is still better than a good day at work!
The spirit of the Ras was flying today with my mate. It’s his first Ras and it shows. He has a great engine so is with the pros and I was delighted to hear that a few guys were passing advice rather than shouting. Mighty stuff.
It helps that he has a motorbike marshal doing team car for him which is both illegal and funny on so many levels.
Stage 6b is tonight and it is a tough one on the riders. Most of the peloton are staying in the Abbey Hotel in Donegal which must be built over a volcano as it’s 40 degrees in all the rooms. There’s a concert with bang-bang music in the square outside. Men are tired and there were a few signs of the odd one losing it in the bar. Gotta love how the Ras affects men.
Outside is full of girls wearing very little and a free rock band - and a bunch of 20-year-old bikies complaining about the noise. It would do a few of them good trying to ride something else for a change!
Tomorrow is day seven. And I'm feelin’ good.
Myles
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