Avalon Sunrise - the statistics

Start:10.30pm Friday 22nd June 2012

Travelled: 350km

Average speed: 14kmh

Ascent: 4415m

Descent: 4498m

What Am I Doing?

Tiverton, a Devon Market Town. 11.30pm, Saturday night. The Police are busy with the tipout of the local pubs and bars, when through town comes a spread-out line of cyclists. They all have good lights, maps, routesheets and head torches on their helmets.

As I come through, at the rear of the line, curiosity has got the better of one of them.

"What are you lot doing?" he asks me, with a touch of incedulity in his voice.

"A bike ride." I say.

"Where to?"

"Just around"

"How far?"

"400 kilometers"

"What for?"

Silence.

"Is it for charity?" he prompts.

"No."

He gives up, and goes back to his drunks. They make more sense.

The exact same exchange is repeated further on up the road.

The Good Stuff

While I was being checked over in hospital, a young student doctor was asking me routine questions, but kind of veered off into "extreme sport" territory and started asking about long carb diets and so on. I stopped him.

"This isn't extreme sport," I explained, "It's just a bike ride."

And let's get it in perspective, that's all it was. It was 400 kilometres of cycling, some of it uphill, some of it downhill, some of it on the level, some of it dry, some of it wet. The sort of thing I do just about every day of my life, only I was doing a great deal of it all at once.

True, it was twice as far as the longest I'd ridden in one go before. I thought of how I felt when I arrived at my inlaws' house at Barmouth, just before Easter, and asked myself "Could I have just had a quick snack and come all the way home again?". The answer was probably not, but then, I hadn't started the ride with that in mind. I had felt good at the end of it, and did cycle most of the way back a couple of days later, as well as having a reasonable intermediate ride while I was there.

On the Avalon Sunrise, if I hadn't endured 5 hours of torrential rain coupled with freezing winds, I'd have completed in time. I'm happy with what I did, and no, the experience certainly hasn't diminished my enthusiasm for audax in the slightest. If anything, the opposite.

A few excellent lessons have been learned.

Next time, I shall arrive early enough to be rested upbefore the ride starts. The ride started at 10.30pm, and I'd had no sleep since 7am. I'd done a morning's work and made a long train journey with 2 changes in the afternoon. I was already quite tired.

Next time, I'll take a survival blanket or two with me. It had crossed my mind, but I didn't do anything about it. If I'd had one, I could have found a sheltered corner, and got myself warmer than I was, and could have probably carried on after a couple of hours sleep.

Next time, I'll be carrying less luggage, but what to leave out?

Next time, I WILL have lost some weight. 

Next time, I won't be dependent on the kindness of strangers.

So, why do it at all, let alone again?

There were a few things which attracted me to the Avalon Sunrise:

• starting a ride at sunset
• riding through Glastonbury at dawn
• riding for around 24 hours
• getting back to a lovely pub for food and drink at the end
• a quiet night of camping before coming home 

I was a bit gobsmacked by the start - I hadn't expected the pace to be quite so, well, brisk.

I was very soon left holding the Lanterne Rouge, a position I am familiar with, but I kept their red lights in my sight as far as the first control (25km).

After that, I knew if I tried to hold onto them, my pace would be unsustainable, so I settled into my own groove. Riding the A395 from Tiverton to Minehead was lovely - gradients are easier, simply because you can't see them at night. The noises of the forest spur you on to faster and faster descents! A very welcome cup of tea in the company of two elderly ladies in Minehead was quite surreal at the second control, when I discovered I was not the back marker after all - someone had started late!

Along the A39 to Bridgwater, the wind was (mostly) at my back and made the going easy, though a couple of hours of light rain just before dawn soon countered that. Daylight as I neared Street and Glastonbury was very welcome, and the views were a delight. The day became a test of stamina and concentration which I seemed to be winning. I was arriving at controls in time, I was riding comfortably, my bike was singing. My only "mechanical" problem had been my maptrap vibrating loose on my new aero bars. The late starter, a chap who'd punctured twice and the tandem riders (who'd also punctured) soon overtook me. I didn't care.

I was enjoying a much anticipated bacon sandwich on the Bath-Bristol cycle path when I realised I hadn't left myself much time to make the control at Chepstow, and I was further hampered with the complicated web of roundabouts crossed by cycle paths I had to negotiate to skirt around Bristol, but I just made it. That was the halfway point.

Coming back, that's where the pear began to take shape. The rain started somewhere around 4pm and didn't let up. I arrived at a control a little late, and couldn't find the shop, so decided to forget any more controls and just make it back. A random stranger came up and said "get a receipt from the Co-Op" and disappeared into the rain!

I did, and kicked on. The rain was evil. Roads were flooded up to a foot deep in places. I was sick of hills. As night fell I found the last control; a petrol station I'd called into before on the way out. They had a coffee machine! It was Out Of Order! One of the girls behind the counter made me a cup of tea! She offered me a lift back to my tent! I wish now I'd accepted! An hour later, I was out of the game.

Next year will be different!

 

A Comfortable Place

I took this photo minutes after leaving Bath hospital at 7am on Sunday 24th June. I was cold, hungry, thirsty, damp and tired. I was carrying a hefty pannier which very soon started to hurt my fingers. Someone pulled alongside in a car and demanded to know where the local Travelodge was. It was a local taxi driver. I passed the police station. An old man with a splendid beard was just leaving, with his tesco trolley and a couple of carrier bags, escorted out by a young constable. I came upon a lovely cafe full of warmth and pleasant smells with menus in the window and the door open. I walked in, only to be told that they didn't open till 9am. It was 07:45. I found the train station. I could get a train at 09:39. I resumed me search for food. Only McDonald's was open.

 

Strangers to kindness.

I have a faintly ridiculous acquaintance who becomes theatrically aghast whenever I mention my cycling mileage. If it was ever amusing, that wore off a long time ago. He will ask "but what would you do if..." questions ad nauseam, and whenever I bother to dignify his puerile questionings with a reply, it's usually "I don't know until it happens".

Occasionally, on a long ride, such questions will echo round my head, at which point I usually go "la la la la la la la la LA LA LA!" until it goes away. Most shit doesn't actually happen, so it's a waste of energy thinking about it.

This weekend, while riding a 400k audax, I got so wet and cold I had to stop, for the first time, ever. I could not physically continue. It was awful.

It happened around 10pm Saturday evening. I'd been cycling constantly (apart from food stops) since 10.30pm the previous evening. I'd also been awake the whole of Friday; at work in the morning, travelling by train in the afternoon, with 2 changes, so no chance of a kip on the train without running the risk of waking up somewhere totally inappropriate.

At around 5pm on the Saturday, it started to rain (it might have been earlier). When I say "rain", I mean rain of biblical proportions. At one point, I rode through a flooded stretch of country lane which completely covered my chainset, so well over a foot deep. However, once you're wet, you're wet, and that's usually as bad as it gets, so you carry on. I remember musing about why people moan about rain, why it has the capacity to make them thoroughly miserable. As poet Mark Gwynne-Jones says "It's Only Water".

However, at around 9:30pm, the wind, which had been around the whole time in varying strengths, picked up. The chill factor, and the fact that the sun had just set somewhere beyond those impenetrable clouds, meant the temperature dropped faster than a lemming.

I had about 50k left of my ride to complete. I decided it would be best to stick to the main road. I quickly got slower and slower as my legs started to seize. Mentally, I thought I felt fine. Suddenly, I stopped. No reason. One minute fine, one minute not.

(I'm finding this hard to write about now, maybe because the danger of my situation has finally dawned on me.)

The roundabouts on the A361 at Frome have names. From somewhere the idea came to stand at a roundabout so I could tell the emergency services my location. I became lucid again once I had someone on the phone to talk to. There was a petrol station, but it took me some time to decide to go and stand under the canopy, out of the rain. The man behind the glass ignored me completely.

A paramedic first response car turned up and he eventually got the miserable bastard in the shop to open the door and let us stand inside, but only after he'd said "This guy is hypothermic, I have to get him out of the cold or he may die." Even then, the guy begrudged us every inch of floor space.

The paramedic suggested all sorts of ways I might get out of this mess, but none of them amounted to anything:

• Local B&B - how do we find them? Tried a few from the 118 numbet, no vacancies.
• Taxi from Frome to Taunton - quote £150!
• No-one available to pick me up - told the audax organiser I wouldn't be home by midnight, but he didn't have any way of helping.
• He couldn't leave me in his control room or he'd be hanged, drawn and quartered the next day. 
• Local Police - were willing to help, but they couldn't leave me in the station alone, and it was midnight on Saturday night. They did however very kindly pick my bike up from the back of the petrol station, and keep in in the police station for me to collect the next day.

The only option we had was for him to drive me 30 miles to Bath Hospital, take me to A&E, and hope they would give me shelter. What they did give me was a Hard Time.

He pickied up 3 blankets from his office for me - the nurses took these away from me, apart from the one I refused to let go of.
They told me I wasn't ill, and that I shouldn't be there.
I asked where I should go and volunteered to go there. No suggestions.
I desperately needed hot fluids, they gave me a cup of lukewarm tea.
A student doctor examined me and said I needed food and warmth. They refused, maintaining that I was not a medical emergency.
They maintained, from 1am onwards, that they would get busy any minute (they never did) and that I would be "in the way".
They told me that my predicament was "completely self-inflicted"
They made me sleep in a chair, despite having six empty beds.
I was told to leave at 7am, whether ready or not. Trust me, I was ready.

The paramedic would have probably taken me to his house if that was the only option.

The police did what they could.

The petrol station guy would have let me die on his doorstep.

The nurses would have done the same, only it would have looked bad on them, so they tried to make me more miserable than I already was.

What has happened to human compassion? 

When I was turfed out of the hospital I phoned my friend Steve who lives quite a way away, but nearer than anyone else. He simply asked where I needed picking up from. Nothing else. Thanks, Steve.

God bless everyone I met that night, particularly the girls I met in the previous petrol station, one of whom made me a free cup of tea because the coffee machine wasn't working, and actually offered me a lift to my tent!

 

 

 

...more warming up

Following my evening ride yesterday, today I rode to Haverfordwest (20km) and had a swim. I can't remember the last time I swam! It's well over a year ago, and I was only capable of 10 lengths of the pool, which is shameful even by my paltry standards. I then had to have an MRI scan on my left knee, during which I fell asleep.

Cycling home, I felt quite poorly at one point - dizziness and tingling. I sat down for 10 minutes and had some chocolate and it passed, but still left me feeling quite weak.

less than 2 weeks...

I found this quote last night:

"The best rides are the ones where you bite off much more than you can chew, and live through it." Doug Bradbury (Manitou)

and that kind of sums it all up for me.

Last Thursday I'd planned to ride all night in preparation for the Avalon Sunrise. Watching the six o'clock news, I decided against it after the second severe weather warning was announced (rain and high winds), though a part of me still wanted to venture out just to see how bad it was. The next day, as I surveyed ripped branches and fallen trees, I was glad I hadn't (though a part of me was sorry).

That was kind of my only chance at serious preparation.

Yesterday I was marshalling the Long Course weekend, manning a food station for riders doing 40, 70 and 118 mile rides. I saw the riders of the long ride twice. Some were prepared, some not so. A few had definitely bitten off more than they could chew, but they were carrying on. One guy near the back was looking close to collapse, and stated that he probably wasn't going to finish. Another rider overheard him and said "you've come too far not to finish, you'll do it!" and rode off up the lane. The food stop was at the 73 mile mark, he still had over 40 miles to do. The remark seemed to spur him on. I made sure he had enough water and food to keep him going, and off he went.

I hope he made it.

I tend not to prepare for anything really, I just do it. How can I prepare to ride twice as far as I've ever ridden in a day? I've no idea what cycling further than 200k in one go feels like, but I do know that cycling long distances over a few days gets easier as the days go by. The best way, for me, to warm up for a 100k ride is to ride more than 100k the previous day, so I know it's well within my capabilities, but 400k will never be within my capabilities, even when I've done one, the next one will be just as much of a challenge.

I think all I can realistically do is keep riding a bit each day, make sure my bike is in good order, and make sure I have enough food/drink/clothing to survive 24 hours in the saddle.

My route sheet is here.
My train tickets are here.
It's too late to stop now. 

400km of audacity

I'm not sure what possessed me to do it, but I've just this minute registered for a 400km audax event, which is around 240 miles in old money.

This is twice as far as I've ever ridden in one go.

Still, it's three weeks away.

Frankly, I don't know what I'm doing, I'm just winging it.

I've recently spent lots more money than I should have on stuff for my bike; new bars, bar tape (leather, cost 3 times more than the bars themselves) a "map trap" for route sheets, new saddle bag, new shoes etc etc, so maybe this is a way of justifying the expense?

Actually, the shoes were a necessity. My old Bontrager shoes have had three years of hard wear. The inner material around the heel had long since perished and my heels were constantly rubbing against shards of bare plastic - they actually wore holes in my sealskinz socks! I now have a rather nice pair of North Wave Gore Tex touring shoes with Vibram soles - cycling shoes I can actually walk comfortably in! They're also plenty wide enough for my feet, which I've always had trouble with in the past, but best of all, they were in a sale! I was already looking at some non-goretex touring shoes which were reasonably priced, and these were only a little extra.

The ride I've entered is the Avalon Sunrise. Who could resist with such a lovely name?

I'll let you know how I get on.