Cycling champ | Pedal power

The doubts started creeping into Bharat Pannu’s head on the third day of the Ultra Spice Race—a 1,750-km ultra cycling endeavour that got underway on January 22 from Bogmalo Beach in Goa, headed towards Ooty, before making its way back to the starting point. He had ridden about a thousand kilometres until then, solo and self-supported. But now, pedalling in the wee hours of the morning around Kalpetta in Kerala, he didn’t see the sense of the entire effort.“The next cyclist was trailing me by a good distance. It breaks you down mentally because riding solo is one thing, but riding without competition makes things really difficult,” says Pannu, who is 41.