2012-06-24 06:27:34 | Blog
Unfortunately my completion of The Great Test of Strength, 540 km (355 miles) of bicycling from Trondheim to Oslo was not meant to be. After six, almost seven, hours on the bike, my Crohn's disease decided to give me severe stomach cramps, and the runs. So just before Dombås (200 km) I threw in the towel and waited for one of our assisting cars.
I was a very bitter man last night, and I still get occasional flashes of depression thinking about it. After all, I've trained for this for a long time, spent countless of hours and money on it and then it ends like this.
Thankfully people have been very supportive, and have given me positive advice on how to handle it.
Four other members of the team also called it quits during the race. However, two of them decided to continue after getting a few hours of rest and being driven by cars for parts of the distance, so they did still respectably. We also lost three other team members during the trip and so far it seems like only one of them completed the race.
I'm really impressed with the rest of the team, they can be proud of themselves.
Even if I'm a bit down in the dumps right now, I will try to focus positively on this:
As several of my friends have said: "You completed 200 km of bicycling under hard circumstances. I would never be able to do that." (With the right amount of training, you could, but thanks none the less)
All that bicycling I've done has not been in vain. I'm in great shape, in fact, I've never been in greater shape.
All the equipment I've bought and invested in will be of great use also after this
I did have control over the stuff I could control, and it wasn't my fault I had to give up
I can always try again later (probably won't be next year, though)
When I bicycled over the plains of Dovre, and was met with very powerful winds against me, I thought I was alone, as I had lost the rest of the team due to the pain in my stomach. Suddenly I heard someone calling me from behind. "You can rest a bit now. You've pulled us for over 20 minutes." When I turned around, there were ten people resting comfortably behind me. When I slowly backed behind the line of people, I received encouraging shouts of having done a very respectable job pulling them up the hill. I'll take the victories where I can
Bjørn Audun and I got a very nice newspaper story out of the team's preparations (my text, his photos) and Bjørn, with some assistance from me, also did a very good job of updating the local newspaper online edition on our progress during the race
I put up a web page where people could track us live on a map which was very well received by both friends and family of the team
It has been a great experience preparing for this, and I've gotten to know a great bunch of new people who share my bicycling passion
Even if I had to give up, getting to know how this race works was a great learning experience. I got to see both the bicycling side, but also the great job our assisting crew was doing
And: I know quite a few Crohn's patients who are so sick that they can only dream of being able to even begin to prepare for this. Looking at this in that perspective, I'm very lucky.
And most important: I'm in Oslo right now and can therefore shop comics at Outland before meeting good friends.
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