That's How He Rolls: Alan Gray takes matters into his own hands when his bike let him down just 500 metres from the finish line in Baltinglass yesterday (Photo: Ramsey Cardy - Sportsfile)
Having raced as a category 3 rider for many years before a bad crash five years ago in the Newry Three day sidelined him from competing, Dundalk man Alan Gray is riding his first Rás at the age of 42 years.
When his chain got wrapped around his crank after a mechanical with 500 metres to go yesterday into Baltinglass, the former Ironman competitor shrugged off his bad luck after almost 100 miles in the saddle and simply ran over the line with his bike.
“I have a triathlon background so to run straight off a bike; my body would be well used to that whereas a lot of other boys would be cramping,” he told stickybottle.
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“I looked down at the bike and tried to fix the chain but it was wrapped around the crank a few times so I was pretty relaxed about it and ran.
“I’d be pretty relaxed towards life anyway. I take each day as it comes. I take every metre in the road as it comes, not looking 500 metres up the road. I live in the now, I never check the next day’s stages or the climbs, I just take it as it comes.”
The property manager from Dundalk, Co Louth, said he was minded to get back on his bike and tackle the Rás for the first time this year when Cuchulainn CC mooted entering a team of riders all over the age of 40 years.
“I’d been heavily involved in organising triathlons and really the only way I was going to step away from that and get back to doing more for myself was picking a challenge like the Rás and aiming for it,” he said.
However, once his interest was pricked, a personal goal then spurred him on.
“My father Martin Gray rode it when he was 42 so I thought I’d like to do it in the same year he had, to follow in the footsteps,” he said.
“He started cycling at the age of 40. He smoked and drank all his life. He gave the fags and drink up and did the Rás two years later,” he said of his father’s ride in the race back in 1993.
“If I was going to do it, when I came back training again I said to myself I’d like to do it now in the same year as him; to have a lash at it.”
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Now he has just today’s stage remaining to join his father, who still races on the IVCA scene, as a Man of the Rás.
“I’d like to come back again to this next year” he added, already looking forward. I did the Rás Mumhan at Easter and I actually felt the first day down there was tougher than any stage here”.
Listening to him describe the crash that put him off the bike five years ago, is sounds like he is lucky to be competing at all.
“When I crashed on the Newry Three Day I went up into the air; done very serious damage to my back. I didn’t break it but it was very badly injured.
“The doctor on the race just happened to be in a car behind when I crash and said to the passenger in the car ‘there’s a broken back if I ever saw one’. The two wheels were facing the clouds when he saw me. The back took a very long time to heal.
A veteran of five Ironman events in Austria and Germany, the last one of those he competed in was 2009.
His week has gone well, he said. He has finished in the bunch on a number of stages though on stage 2 endured something of an epic amount of punishment.
“My back wheel came lose around 5km into the race. I chased on for an hour and 20 minutes and I eventually got back on on my own. Then just as I got back on it lined out and I let a wheel go. I had worked so hard on my own for so long....”
He eventually got in with a group of around 20 and made his way to stage end. The following day he finished in the bunch and on stage 4, as a big man, struggled a little on the bigger of the 10 categorised climbs on a route that took the race 184km to Cahirciveen.
“I was grand until the cat 1 climbing. I wouldn’t be a great climber; a bit heavy at 82 kilos. I’d definitely like to lose a few more kilos, gain some more watts and come back and give the Rás another go.”
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