jez

The Road to Sotonia

I tell people that I’ve done more cycling outside the club than in it. This is true, but as a member of Sotonia I’ve had more fun than at any time in my cycling career.

Cycling life started at the age of 10 when my brother joined the Kingsgate and Venta Road Club. My father ferried the time trial team to events in his black Ford Prefect, and every Saturday night during the summer the house reeked of Elleman’s Athletic Rub, the human horse liniment. At the crack of dawn they would leave for the race, transporting the bikes on a roof rack with them upturned and secured with toe straps fastened round the handlebars and saddle – three bikes on top, three riders in the car, and so no room for me.

The day the Kingsgate ran their open event was my chance. Dad boiled kettles of water using two Primus stoves and served tea and cakes at the foot of St Catherine’s Hill on the old Winchester by-pass - I was his helper. It seems as if nothing has changed except dad is no longer with me and the Primus stoves have long gone!

At 13, I road my first time trial on the Colden Common to Bishops Waltham course at the instigation of Eddie Woodford, a founder member of Sotonia CC – 10 miles in a time of 32:08 on a pre-war Hercules bike with a fixed wheel. I continued using this bike for about a year until a young man with red hair persuaded me it was time to try gears. My beloved 1948 lugless Claud Butler arrived, the frame purchased by Bill (the redhead) from his postman for 10/- and the second-hand components donated by various club members. I rode by first 25 on the P18, Winchester to Basingstoke and back!

In 1964 I joined the Antelope CC, one of the founder clubs of Sotonia. That year a group of us, including Eddie who was now a member of the Antelope, raced on the Isle of Man, travelling to Liverpool in an old Commer van with the bikes and Eddie’s trike strapped to its roof in the time honoured way - a dreadful journey in torrential rain.

The years passed with periods off and on the bike – I bought a Peugeot tandem to enable my son Peter to ride with me. We travelled far on that thing – on and off road – in Britain and abroad, often with Barbara Braithwaite and Chalky White. When Peter stopped riding, I continued on my new TJ Quick, the Claude Butler’s frame having broken under the weight of child and shopping!

More years passed and a call from Bill (the redhead) got me training for a visit to the Black Forest in Germany. At this point I joined Sotonia CC as a second-claim member and was organising turbo training sessions at the clubroom at Valley Park; Ian Stewart was the Club Secretary and Julian Gee the Chairman. This was 2009, when Ian was diagnosed with a heart condition and was forced to resign as Secretary. I was asked if I would stand as General Secretary at the AGM, I agreed and became a first-claim member of the Club. It has been great fun since then – Wednesday rides with the Wobblers; the occasional time trial, both solo and on a tandem; the odd weekend hostel trip; helping riders in 12- and 24-hour races (and the occasional 100-miler); organising reliability rides; and, of course, brewing tea and serving cakes!!

Penny Cossburn

by jez

How Sotonia has changed my life (for the better)

Although I’ve ridden a bicycle since the age of seven – my first had solid wheels instead of proper tyres – it wasn’t until I was in my late 50s that I was introduced to road cycling, by my neighbour Oscar Lavanchy. I had just survived a stressful managerial position at the University of Southampton, and succeeded in putting together a bit of paid and unpaid leave to get a full year free from teaching and administration.

It wasn’t long before Oscar sold me the Peugeot he had lent me, which I loved riding even though it was two sizes too large. Soon after that he introduced me to the club, which I joined in 2006. (I remember the year because I qualified for the over-60s membership rate the following year.) Oscar did not go on very many club rides himself – ‘I prefer working on bicycles to riding them’, he would often say – so I usually tagged along in a group led by Julian Gee, from whom I learned much about group riding and, later, lead riding. At the same time I was exploring the quieter roads in Hampshire and Wiltshire on my own and began devising new routes, which were usually too long for a Sunday club run at a leisurely pace.

It was Mary Corbett who introduced me to the pleasures of all-day cycling, in a testing 80-mile circuit round northeast Hampshire, one which I nearly didn’t survive. (Mary, with assistance from Norman Harvey, ensured that I got back to the start.) After that experience, I practised longer rides on my own until I felt confident in leading a small group across the Salisbury Plain to Imber, a village taken over by the British army in 1943 and never returned to its inhabitants. The Imber ride, my first ‘century’, became an annual event for a few years; the return leg, along the Wylye Valley from Warminster to Wilton, became one of my favourite ‘segments’. I didn’t have a GPS device (I hadn’t even known that they made such things for cyclists), but found the quieter roads with the aid of Ordnance Survey maps and tried to keep the routes in my head.

The Reliability Rides, which were organised by Penny Cossburn, were ideally suited to my cycling temperament, and I could manage a 'bronze' classification (12 mph) – sometimes a silver (14 mph) – on the shorter routes . In the early 2010s I tried to gain enough stamina for the 150-mile Dorset Demon; as I explained to Penny, by starting out at 6am rather than with the others at 8, I might finish by sundown, even if out of the running for a bronze award. But a few days after a long ride in June 2012, I began to notice severe pain in my back and my right leg. These were early signs of septicaemia, a bacterial infection of the circulatory system which can be cured only by massive doses of penicillin, and which was not properly diagnosed for another week. I was taken by ambulance to Southampton General Hospital on the Fourth of July; according to the nurse under whose supervision I spent two delirious days in Intensive Care, reciting the names of villages through which the Dorset Demon passed. (Of this experience I have no recollection whatever!)

Leaving hospital on crutches three weeks later, and weighing 9kg less than when I entered, I began to rebuild the muscle tissue in my right leg: for this I have not only the persistence of my wife Andrea to thank but also that of the physiotherapist at SGH, David Wilson: neither would let me feel sorry for myself or miss an opportunity to rehabilitate my legs. But my right knee was permanently weakened.

A couple of years later I came off my bike and suffered a broken collarbone – I may have been accidentally hit by a car – but by then I had made sufficient progress not to be put off by this injury. Then, on the Fourth of July 2015, three years to the day of my admission to SGH, I rode the route of the Dorset Demon in the company of a new cycling friend, Sheelagh Evans. We didn’t treat it as a competitive ride, and even enjoyed a sit-down lunch at the Old School House in Yetminster (highly recommended).

Apart from two ascents of Dean Hill – on a good day I can get up it in four minutes – I’ve not done any competitive riding with Sotonia. But I do enjoy riding – and devising – new reliability routes. The Forest Fourscore, first run in 2013, is a relatively flat 80-miler; the Bourne Supremacy (a hillier variant of the Bourne Valley) and the Somerset Saunter (a sister route to the Dorset Demon) ran for the first time in 2016; another new cyclo-friend, Myles Ward, helped me test the latter route through Longleat Safari Park, Cheddar Gorge and Glastonbury. I now help Penny to plan and run the club's reliability rides, and more new routes are on the schedule for 2017.

Having recently retired from teaching, I’ve had more time to devote to cycling. I attend spinning classes three times a week; these are a great help for stamina; and I have no fear of climbing, even if my knee is hurting. I still ride a lot on my own, to create new routes or improve old ones, but I take greater pleasure than ever riding socially. My current companions are nearly all faster, and nearly all younger than I, but they’re a wonderfully patient and supportive group, who appreciate my quest for new routes and refreshment stops. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Janet Burnage, my longest-standing, most loyal riding partner of late, who never fails to communicate to me her thoughts about routes, cafés, companions, and – the weather – whenever she feels so inclined.

Finally, my family – Andrea, and my daughters Esther and Lydia who cycle socially and competitively in London – have been wonderfully tolerant over the past decade. As a family we explore the quieter roads of Upper Austria and Bohemia during the summer holidays; but that is a different story, for a different occasion.

Bill Drabkin

by jez

Racing with Sotonia

Just over a year ago I decided that I wanted to get into cycling, I’d never done any sport before but loved all things fast. I joined Sotonia, starting with some of the skill sessions which were incredibly helpful, especially in the long term. Not long afterwards, I did my first club run. Things was going great until I had a puncture, but the other riders helped repair it. When we got to the café stop after 45 miles, I was dead, ate a large quantity of cake, then wondered how I would get home. Thankfully the others slowed down for me as the pace of 16 miles an hour was too much for my inexperienced, drained legs.

Fast-forward a bit, through many, many club runs and bonks, and I could confidently ride 60 miles without having to worry about destroying my legs, even if I did put in some efforts. After adding a few miles to my weekly total, then I did my first race, coming in 25th out of 80, which I was pretty chuffed about. That is, until I got 4th the following week, which was followed a couple of weeks later by a win! It was a great to win whilst representing a club to which I really felt I belonged.

After a short break from racing, following my rank up to category 3, I did a couple of club time trials, which I really enjoyed as it’s a more relaxed event where there is much less pressure. I finished second in one of the 10-mile TTs in 24:58, a time of which I was incredibly proud. Starting to do the fast club runs, I was gaining more confidence and signed on for some cat 3 races. In the last month, I’ve competed in 8 races and am 25 points into cat 3, with the hopes of getting to cat 2 by the end of the season.

Having joined Sotonia only in 2015, I have gone from a complete novice to a reasonably competent racer. All thanks to the club runs and support from the members. I can honestly say that I don’t know what I would do without cycling, and will always recommend Sotonia as the club to join.

Red Walters

by jez