Traditionally, if you want to interview a professional sportsperson, you arrange a date, time and venue (probably the plush-carpeted lounge of a nearby hotel, or at the very least a good coffee shop with a quiet corner), lay out your notes/Dictaphone/pens, check the audio is recording properly, order a coffee and then start chatting. But professional cyclists are not ‘ordinary’ sportspeople. You’ll get a much better insight into what makes them tick by doing something you both love, such as riding your bikes. This is why a few days before Christmas Olly found himself out in the wilds of north-east Northumberland with local legend Rich Rothwell.
“I had one of those proper full-speed over-the-bars crashes, down a rough, rocky bridleway. It was such a big crash that I had time to think about the landing as I was flying through the air. As I landed on the ground, I could see the bike going end over end over end, bouncing down the track. I was lying there thinking ‘don’t move’ and wondering which bit of me was broken. I must have hit the handlebars or toptube, as within a couple of days, the top of my leg and my back were all purple with bruising. Miraculously I was fine, although it obviously hurt! I was pumped so full of adrenaline that I didn’t really register it and it seemed as though my body was working ok. But then I picked up my bike and loads of little annoying things had been broken. I couldn’t get my front shifter working, I’d snapped the adjuster barrel off the rear mech (so I only had a few gears at the rear), I’d snapped my USB cable, so I had no way of charging my Garmin and I’d broken my light bracket. I remounted and rode on, but as I later got near one of the towns, I realised that I’d also lost my cash and my cards, so I had no way of paying for anything.”
“It was such a big crash that I had time to think about the landing as I was flying through the air.”
Rich Rothwell was telling me this story as we rode along. The conditions under our tyres were pretty treacherous – a layer of greasy, clayey mud was liberally coating the trail and it meant we were busy fighting for traction, while I was desperately trying to retain the salient points of his story. When you go riding with a former 24-hour solo MTB world champion, you have to expect that a) it will be a struggle just to keep up and b) you will be privileged to hear some pretty eye-opening (and eye-watering) stories. Trying to interview an ultra-endurance athlete in the middle of a gravel ride probably wasn’t my finest plan, but I figured that riding together was the perfect way to get to know him a little better and also a good excuse for a slap-up lunch.
“I’m a massive fish and chip fan. Probably the biggest in the world, in fact.”
“I’m a massive fish and chip fan.” Rich told me when I first invited him to come along for a ride and explained my suggested route. “Probably the biggest in the world, in fact.” Although elite-level athletes probably wouldn’t consider a mid-ride plate of fish and chips as an ideal nutritional plan, our ride wasn’t designed to be race training. “I would have normally just have ridden down to yours,” Rich told me as he arrived for a pre-ride coffee “but I’ve got a stinking head cold and I’m doing a huge ride in the Lake District at the weekend, so I’m trying to be sensible.” Rich only lives about 30km north of where I’m based and for him, the thought of adding 60km of riding to an already pretty long route didn’t seem anything out of the ordinary. That’s the difference between an ultra-distance cyclist and a mere mortal – even if he had ridden to/from the start, he would have only just warmed up by the time I was ready for a lie-down in a dark room!
I knew that despite Rich being under-the-weather I was going to struggle to hold his wheel, but I had a trump card up my sleeve – local knowledge. “I can’t remember the last time I actually came into Newcastle” he told me as we set off from Gravel Union Towers “I’m really not a fan of big cities, so I try and avoid coming here.” In the scheme of things, Newcastle upon Tyne can’t really be considered an urban metropolis – it only has a population of around 300,000 people after all. But the fact he didn’t come and visit very often meant he didn’t know many of my local trails, so for the first hour at least I had local knowledge as my ride strategy.
“We’re going under the flyover and then we turn hard right up a long flight of concrete steps” I told him. I’d ridden them a significant number of times before and knew that with a combination of the right gear and the appropriate body position, they were perfectly ‘cleanable’, but they definitely weren’t easy – too hard a gear and you risk running out of momentum halfway up. You could see Rich’s riding heritage shine through though - he rode straight up them first time and was barely out of breath at the top. Git.
The route that I had planned was archetypal gravel riding in a former industrial landscape – a mix of urban singletrack, bike paths, bridleways around the edge of a field, old railway lines and even some cobbled backstreets. Winter in the north-east of England had not been kind to us and everywhere was completely saturated after months of heavy rainfall. Miraculously, the chosen day of our ride was blue and sunny, but I’d had to think pretty carefully about where to go to avoid sinking up to our hubs in slop (and we did do that at a couple of points anyway).
“OK, now I know where we are.” Rich said. “I frequently bring my school groups along here.” A sculpture of a giant spoon sticking out of the ground is not something you would forget in a hurry. As part of his role in the cycling world, Rich is a qualified bike tutor and works with local school groups, introducing kids to the world of cycling. The trail network near the spoon sculpture is perfect for this – basically flat and completely enmeshed with a network of great trails, although the formerly industrial landscape can be impressively slippery if the ground is saturated. We channelled our inner Van der Poel and tried to emulate the cyclocross star’s immense mud-riding skills as we traversed the clay-slicked landscape.
As we headed further north, Rich told me how he combined his love of cycling with a need to earn a living. “My plan initially was to become a chef. I started off as a pot washer and then worked my way up through the kitchen hierarchy, while I was travelling and working out in Australia. I was really passionate about it and was pretty good, but I’d learned everything on the job and didn’t have any qualifications. When the management changed at the hotel where I was working, they wanted me to go on a training course to get my chef qualifications, but I had to start with the basics again and I really didn’t enjoy it, so I looked for a different career instead.”
“I had some great ideas for the route, but I needed to find the right venue to host it.”
“Now I split my time between working as an online cycling coach, some freelance journalism work, my teaching & instructing work with local school groups, competing in ultra-endurance MTB and gravel events and I’m soon going to be an event organiser too, with the launch of my The Land Between event.” Rich told me, as we sat eating our lunch. He explained how the idea for his event came about “I’d been thinking about it for a while and had been asked by different friends to organise something. I had some great ideas for the route, but I needed to find the right venue to host it. I knew exactly where I wanted the event to be based, but I had to convince the owners of the pub that it was a good idea. Luckily, they said yes and the inaugural version of the event will be held in August. It’s basically a tour of Northumberland, but also includes a short detour into neighbouring County Durham and there’s a section that crosses the border into Scotland. The route will be somewhere around 350 miles (560km) and will include a huge range of trails and scenery, from wild and remote moorland to sandy coastal singletrack to the UK’s oldest cycling tunnel. There’s 6000m of climbing, so it won’t be easy, but it will be fun and rewarding as well as being a challenge.”
As we finished our lunch and headed south down the coast it became pretty obvious that Rich was definitely powered by fish & chips. In the morning our pace had been pretty evenly matched – albeit undoubtedly helped by my local knowledge and Rich’s head cold. After lunch however, with stomachs full and legs cold, Rich got into his stride and upped the pace. I had to use every tool I had to try and stay with him, including throwing in my special section of lethally slippery off-camber roots, but nothing seemed to phase him (or slow him down). “I’m going to be riding the Lakeland200 on Friday, so I should really be saving my legs” Rich said, as I rode alongside him, gasping for breath. It didn’t feel that he was doing much ‘leg saving’ to me!
He had previously completed the same route, including in October 2022 with his 11-year-old son, but this was going to be a shortest-day challenge and the weather forecast was appalling – winds were forecasted to gust at up to 100 kph, definitely sub-optimal when some of the route is high level with minimal shelter. In the end, the weather got the better of him and he (sensibly) abandoned the attempt “We got halfway up Walna Scar and reluctantly but firmly agreed that continuing was a fool's errand” he later posted on his Insta account “So we did some low-level trails and had a jolly good day out regardless” he continued.
As the sun descended lower in the winter sky, we headed home and Rich started to tell me about his plans for 2024. “My big goal is for James [his son] and I to take on the Arizona Trail Race bikepacking event which is held each year in October. It’s an unofficial challenge event which covers 800 miles from the Mexican border up through Arizona to the border with Utah and includes a mandatory hike-a-bike through the Grand Canyon. James is already the youngest-ever finisher of the Highland550 event, so he knows roughly what he’s letting himself for, but this will be a big challenge.”
As we navigated our way through the late afternoon dog-walkers and early-finish car drivers I had one last card up my sleeve – some super-fun (albeit slightly cheeky) urban singletrack which included one hilariously steep drop down into a patch of woodland. I know a significant number of riders, who even riding an XC MTB have flinched at the top, but this time, in appallingly slippery conditions and riding a gravel bike, Rich rode straight down it and did so with a big smile on his face. Although he might not be super famous on the world scene, the ability to ride a technically challenging trail completely blind and in awful conditions is definitely what separates a champion from an also-ran. “I’ve got James to thank for my good skills” he told me “Even though he’s only 12, his skills are incredible. Every time we go riding together, he pushes me to ride harder and harder trails. It won’t be long until I won't be able to keep up.”
I’ll obviously have to remember to do a lot more training before I ask to go riding with Rich and his son.
If you’d like to find out more about Rich’s The Land Between event, head over to the event website and if you’d like to follow Rich’s adventures on two wheels, his Insta profile is worth a follow too.