On Saturday, Ved, Desi, Mal and I jumped into Ved’s girlfriend’s car and zoomed, well, okay, leisurely rolled, from London to Bridgend in Wales for the 2009 Dragon Ride. On the back of the car we had Tom’s bike rack supporting three bikes – two nice ones for Ved and Des and my heavy piece of winter training aluminium – aka the “Rubble”.
Our pace was dictated somewhat by paranoia and the bouncing bikes strapped out the back of the car. Would they all make it?
Having done no cycling other than my normal commuting and a single 100k ride on the Condor fixed since the Tour of Ireland in early May I was just a smidgen under-prepared let’s say? I’ve done enough of these long sportives to know that the distance was not going to be too much trouble but I knew at the same time it wouldn’t be the most pleasant 190k.
We arrived in one piece, and unloaded the car into the Jesmond Villa B&B. It was a fairly cheap B&B right in the town – perfect for what we wanted. For some reason, all the bugs we had run into seemed to favour my blue bike – coating the top tube and saddle and completely missing Des and Ved’s carbon bikes. Wipe down or save for a protein snack on ride day?
We met John, who had caught the train with his bike to Bridgend and then all headed into town. For a place expecting 3000 riders to descend upon it tomorrow it was eerily quiet! A strong waft of garlic drew us to an Italian restaurant but budgetary concerns saw us heading back towards the Wetherspoons pub. What a fantastic decision. I think I might move to Bridgend just to live in this place! None of us could believe how cheap everything was! I wanted beer. The others wanted food. Most of the group ordered two main meals for the price of one in London. Beer was half London’s prices. I was so excited they had to keep taking the drink menu off me (spot the alcoholic!).
A few more guys and gals from www.londonfgss.com rocked up (Paul, Pip and Sophie) and we all ate and drank more. Some (hiccup) drank more than others. Nevermind.. I’d been training for this aspect over the last month. 🙂
Everyone eventually left to get some sleep and so, finally, did Mal and I. Set the bike up and went to sleep.
In the morning had some jam toast and coffee and then stripped the bike to put it back on the car – ha! No warm up for us. There was a bit of a struggle to park but we all got setup eventually and rolled along to the start line. Some photos were taken of our little group and the countdown started.
The final official start time was 9.15 and I think we rolled out on the 9.15 slot but there were still people behind us so I guess they kept it open a bit longer. Immediately the pace was up. It’s always the same.. everyone is excited, full of energy and just wanting to start. One or two guys in our small group were off the front. I held back, fighting the urge to chase. This lasted about 5-10k and then it was every man for himself!
I was worried about the good bike on the car rack so I’d decided to bring the indestructible Ribble which had 39×23 for it’s lowest gear and weighs as much as a Smart Car. I actually have a 27T and thought the Ribble had a 25T so it was a bit of a shock counting the teeth two weeks later and finding out I was running 23T! No wonder I found it hard to slow down on the climbs – I was always in and out of the saddle just to keep the gear ticking over!
Desi and I yo-yo’d around, he’d catch up and pass me on the downhills and I’d catch up on the up hills. This was substantially bigger in rider numbers than most of the sportives I’ve done with about 2500-3000 riders on the road. Since we’d started towards the back end of the field there was lots of passing required. Lots of rider traffic is not always the best when you’re one of the faster riders down the hills. “Outta my way! Weeeeeeeeee!” 😉
I lost Desi somewhere along the way. Spotted Tommy at the top of Blwch 1 and said g’day while he yelled “beat ya!”. At the 50k first feed mark I found Mike the Bike and we had a chat while I scoffed jam tarts. I started again and it was after this feed we hit the LONG climbs of the Brecon Beacons. These are supposed to resemble French climbs (I’ll find out soon when I’m there for Le Tour with Croydon Cycle Works) in that they aren’t uber steep like the 15-25% climbs around London they are around 6% gradients but they gone on forever! In this heat, with no breeze to provide any cooling, climbing these was more about maintaining mental toughness than physical toughness. I know I can climb pretty much anything in the UK (just slower than most people) so I wasn’t worried about that but you would get to what looked like the top of the hill and then see more cyclists off into the distance, around a corner. “MORE?!” you groan out and then keep plodding along, sweat dripping over everything, warm bottle water providing minimal relief. I was thinking to myself “I wish I could just lie down in the shade for a bit” – if only there was shade and if I could only let myself stop. I was literally waiting for people to start falling down from the heat, although no one near me did I could hear ambulances and guessed they were tending to heatstroke victims. It was that hot!
At one point a guy rode past me and said “Is Rollapaluza harder than the climbing the Brecons?” (I was in Rollapaluza kit). It took me about 5k to catch him, ride up next to him and say “Yes!”. “It took you 3mi to think of an answer?” he said. “No, it took me 3mi to catch my breath to voice it!” and with that I let him carry on away from me. The descents in this area were a nice break from the everlasting climbing but they all seemed to have headwinds that required a good amount of pedaling to make good speeds (80kph max – I’ve gone faster in England).
Before the second ‘Cray’ feed I met one of the Willesden riders, Phil and slowed for a bit of a chat. I then left him get on with it so I could get to the feed. No surprise there then! At the feed I was eating more of those tarts and noticed the other Willesden riders – John, Simon and Dave?. We had a chat there about Mike going the wrong way at that first feed (good excuse to stop the endless climbing!) and then Pip arrived. I loved Pip’s “I should stop riding these in the big ring” and points at his old Cinelli which was probably running 53T up front. “You’re sick!” I said as I ate more tarts. I pulled a swifty on him, went looking for food, ended up chatting to someone else and then rolled on.
It was pretty easy going from here on. One of the Irish blokes I’d got chatting too earlier had his bottle bounce into his back wheel so I chased his companion down to let him know. Other than that it was incident free and not too difficult, riding-wise.
The third feed was at Cimla around the 140k mark. After that I wish I’d known I was going over Bwlch again as I’d probably have let some more digestion occur first. At least the views were nice while I rolled along 🙂 My Powertap packed up at 173k mark (it could have something to do with pouring my isotonic drink all over the squeaking cassette – whoops) so I was running with no data – oh no! At least I was close to the finish.
It was downhill to the finish after Bwlch. I put the pace on with some other guys knowing we were close. I rolled over the finish line in a bit of a daze and was shocked to see John at the finish already. I think I mumbled something to him while catching my breath. When I had recovered I was all “How did you get here so fast?! I don’t remember seeing you pass me!” Turns out I was right about the heat – John had basically ridden to the Brecons and passed out due to the heat! He had to be ambulanced back to the finish whilst having IV drips of saline applied! Damn! I KNEW it was hot!
My finish time was 7hr 12min on the dot, which was slower than I’d hoped but not really unexpected given I’d done basically nothing other than commuting since Tour of Ireland in early May and I was riding “the tank”. Also 93kg, does not a natural climber make! 🙂
We all sat around (Mal, Paul and Sophie had gone to the beach) at the finish waiting for the others to roll in. I got to cheer on Mike and the other Willesden boys finishing. Everybody did good times and we then packed up and turned back for London. Experienced my first taste of Motorway Services. Awesome 😉 Unpacked and then rode home from Richmond to Ealing before collapsing for a good snooze.
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