No matter how long and hard I stared down at my Garmin, the numbers weren’t changing. There were 8.8km and 760m of climbing standing between me and the summit of the Nufenen-Pass in the south of Switzerland.
I tried to forget about the 2,400m my legs had already climbed, and as the early afternoon sun beat down on me, I was a certified battered and broken cyclist. I’d pulled into a small gravel lay-by to get a little respite from the unrelenting gradients of the road, while quietly hoping that allowing some of the lactic acid in my legs to dissipate may enable me to finish the job. I pulled out three small packets of gummy sweets and devoured them, not quite the structured fuelling plan I had envisioned they would be a part of but, right there, at that moment, I really needed every bit of help I could get.
