Cycling

Cycling

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🚴‍♂️ London Wales London 2026

Me, at 5:48am in Chalfont St Peter Community Centre, having just finished the 2026 London Wales London bike ride.
Me, at 5:48am in Chalfont St Peter Community Centre, having just finished the 2026 London Wales London bike ride.

All week I watched the weather in anticipation of the London Wales London Audax ride at the weekend. I’m fortunate to have a real-life weatherman living in my street, so on Wednesday I messaged him to see what he thought. The news wasn’t good. Our spell of sunshine was going to be replaced by a band of rain moving up through England. I’d figured that by doing the ride at around 12mph including stops, the same speed as last year, the rain should hit around 5pm and last until midnight. The temperature looked to be much warmer, not dropping below around 10°C, but I wasn’t sure what the net effect would be given that I was likely to be sopping wet through the middle of the night.

The Epic Ride Weather app’s emoji view gave a fairly accurate prediction of what was to come.
The Epic Ride Weather app’s emoji view gave a fairly accurate prediction of what was to come.

I took Friday off to relax ahead of an early start on Saturday, but ended up spending a lot of it in Bedford, trying to work out how to get in contact with my bank as we attempted to complete the purchase of a used car. When we got back, I spent Friday afternoon prepping my bike, charging all of the devices and making sure I knew where all my bits of kit would be — including, sadly, my rain jacket and spare pairs of waterproof socks and gloves. I slept well, going to bed around 10pm, not as nervously excited as last year, as I thought I knew what was in store. The alarm went off at 3:45am, giving me 45 minutes to gather myself, get dressed, have a small bite to eat and hit the road.

I guess no two rides are the same, but the contrast between last year and this one was so stark. After meeting up in Chesham with Dave W and Dave P from our cycling club, we got to the start in time to meet Ian, Bruce and Dave C, pick up our brevet cards, and for me have a second breakfast of jam on toast with a cup of tea.

Berkhamsted Cycling Club take on London Wales London 2026. Of the six of us from the club that started, only two would make it to the finish.
Berkhamsted Cycling Club take on London Wales London 2026. Of the six of us from the club that started, only two would make it to the finish.

The ride started really well and I was feeling great. The 61km to the Islip control is a fun ride as there are so many cyclists all together, riding in groups, getting into rhythms, chatting, and passing each other. I spent a good chunk of this first stint with Ed, someone that I rode with almost the whole way last year and one of the strongest riders that I knew on the ride. Before we knew it, we were parking our bikes, getting our brevet cards stamped and tucking into the superb third breakfast of sausage baps, hash browns, croissants, bananas and much more besides. Ian wandered in, a while after everyone else, looking flustered and unhappy. He wasn’t feeling well; he had fallen off the back of the group and seemed daunted by the prospect of completing the ride.

Third breakfast.
Third breakfast.

We started to feel as though we had stopped for a bit too long. As the control emptied out, Ed said he was going to push on, and this was the last we saw of him. We left Ian at the control as he was only starting to tuck into his food and we didn’t want to burn another twenty minutes or so. As we walked back to our bikes, Dave P told us that he had a weird noise in his wheel. Cycling away, we heard it immediately — a loud, hollow clanking sound that seemed to emanate from his front wheel rim.

I was now with Dave P, Dave W and Bruce. Dave C had told us way before the event that he was going to be a ‘full value’ rider1 and would go at his own pace, so we didn’t wait for him. He suggested a coffee stop in Stow-on-the-Wold, but given that we had to make a mandatory stop in Tewkesbury we decided to push on. We made good progress, albeit with Dave P’s wheel clanging getting worryingly louder and more frequent as we went. I’ve been through Tewkesbury three times on different Audax rides, and every time I’ve stopped at the excellent Coffee #1. As we parked up and tumbled over each other to get to the toasted sandwiches, crisps, cakes and coffee, Dave P decided to roll to the local bike shop to get a diagnosis for his clanging, and hopefully a fix. As we sat down and waited for our food, Ian turned up looking much, much happier; it was one of my highlights of the day to see that he’d found his mojo and had made such good progress. Dave P returned and the news wasn’t good. The hub of his front wheel had failed and was dangerous to ride. Despite their best attempts to source a part or even a new compatible wheel, the bike shop ultimately couldn’t help, so it was the end of his event.

The three of us pressed on through to Ross-on-Wye and up Symonds Yat, the steepest climb of the day. As we waited for each other at the top, the rain started and quickly got heavier. We stopped to put on our wet weather gear. Then, in a village a few miles before Chepstow, Bruce’s pedal suddenly broke off, leaving the spindle sticking out of the crank. We had already taken a lot of time on this leg with various stops and faffing, so I was anxious to push on. We abandoned Bruce, who looked gutted to not be able to continue.

We wandered into the Chepstow control, which was damp underfoot and filled with sodden cyclists. There was talk in the air of abandoning the ride, given how long the rain was set to continue. I grabbed a bowl of delicious stew and pondered my next move. I was tempted to concede defeat, but also realised that I felt better than I did at this point last year, when the stop at Chepstow was the thing that breathed life back into me. Ian’s thoughts seemed to have returned to how he wasn’t feeling well earlier in the day. He was concerned about getting stranded somewhere from which it wouldn’t be easy to recover, which was totally understandable. So he decided to head to the station and get the train home.2 The ever-smiling and positive Dave C turned up as I pondered what to do, and he told me he was going to keep pedalling. It was 100km to the next control at Lambourn, which felt doable to me. I decided I was going to give it a go too.

At this point I swapped my gloves and socks over to my Sealskinz ‘waterproof’ ones that I’d packed in anticipation of the rain. It was a little chilly as I got back in the saddle, but I figured that pedalling and the climb over the old Severn Bridge would soon warm me up. Dave W seemed to be having his own doubts and wanted to tackle the next bit on his own, at his own pace, which was also understandable. We said our goodbyes and I headed off.

Two minutes up the road I realised that my heart rate monitor was no longer working. It’s not an essential part of the ride, but I do use it to measure my level of exertion, which feeds into my weekly TrainerRoad training plan, so I tried to get it restarted. After messing about with it for five minutes I realised I was wasting even more time and decided I would just go without it for the rest of the ride.

Crossing the Severn Bridge in a torrential downpour was quite an experience. The route file prepped by the organiser, Liam Fitzpatrick, was filled not only with turn-by-turn directions but also points of interest. As I got to the other side of the bridge, my Garmin computer beeped at me to inform me that there was a scenic photo opportunity here, which cracked me up as visibility of anything beyond the bridge was almost zero.

My ride to Lambourn was great, despite the torrential rain. On this leg, I realised that one of the best things about being on your own is that you can stop for a number one at any time without worrying that you’re going to be left behind or that you’re holding up your group. I was well hydrated and stopped exactly when I needed to. Eventually the rain started to ease, and as the clouds became less dense it began to get lighter — just before it started to get dark again. I was sopping wet, but I knew from the forecast that the rain was unlikely to return and this lifted my mood. Malmesbury turned up at just the right time, with its convenient Co-op just slightly off route, as I needed to fill up a water bottle and was craving a Mars Bar. I called home, and my lovely wife insisted that if I needed picking up at the end of the ride I should give her a bit of warning and she’d be there. I’d planned to ride back from the finish in order to bag my longest ride ever and hoped I wouldn’t want — or need — to call.

Further on up the road I needed something savoury, and decided to pull up outside a 24-hour Esso garage. I grabbed two small tubs of ready salted Pringles and stood outside, eating them like an animal, and greeting another rider who pulled up a few minutes after me. Long-distance cycling is weird in that you often feel hungry and nauseous at the same time.

Last year I rolled into the Lambourn control with three friends and knew I was starting to struggle. Back then I was cold as I hadn’t packed enough warm clothes. This time I felt okay-ish — I thought — but given my savoury stop I just couldn’t work out what I wanted to eat. The staffed controls on this ride are simply fantastic, with so many things for people to choose from, but this left me pondering whether I wanted a bowl of chilli and rice, or rice pudding with tinned peaches. I went with the latter, returning for a second helping. It was the last substantial thing I would eat on the ride. Looking back at the selfie I took at the control, I think I can see in my face that I was worn out. But I’d broken the back of the ride and didn’t have that far to go.

At Lambourn control. That droopy eye is a tell-tale sign that I was completely worn out.
At Lambourn control. That droopy eye is a tell-tale sign that I was completely worn out.

It was only 65km to Henley, the penultimate control. I wandered out to my bike and used the torch function on my phone to illuminate my handlebar bag as I fished out an extra not-quite-as-damp layer to fend off the cold, and swapped my spent rear light for a freshly charged spare. As I was putting on my gilet, two riders arrived with a story of taking a 45km detour; somehow they took a wrong turn and only realised when they saw that they had ended up back in the Cotswolds. Wishing them luck, I did my bag up and pushed off, not realising that I’d left my phone and depleted rear light on the wall.

This next leg scared me, and I keep having flashbacks about it. Most of the route was spent on country lanes in the middle of nowhere, the only lights for miles around seemingly being the ones on my bike. The lack of rest had caught up with me. The few metres of road ahead of my bike were hypnotic as I rolled along, and I found myself hallucinating and falling asleep on the bike. A bizarre semi-lucid narrative entered my head like a dream I couldn’t quite make sense of. I tried stopping, slapping myself in the face and singing, but I found I couldn’t make the words with my voice beyond a couple of lines. A couple of times I caught myself as I drifted off, heading to the other side of the road or towards the verge. I passed a bus shelter and considered stopping, but I was worried that I was already way behind schedule and that if I sat down I may not get up for hours. I learned later that long-distance cyclists call these ‘the dozies’ and it’s a common challenge that people have to deal with. About 10km from the end of the leg, another cyclist rolled up behind me. I told him what had been happening and asked if I could ride with him and chat for a while. This seemed to do the trick, nursing me to the 24-hour petrol station that served as the next control.

At this point I realised that I had left my phone in Lambourn. Another cyclist kindly lent me his so that I could call the organiser’s number and let them know; he handed it over to me with the instruction: “Whatever you do, please don’t accidentally call my wife.” Good advice at half past three in the morning. I wasn’t hopeful about getting my phone back as the previous control had closed around 20 minutes before. But, to my amazement, Liam told me that both my phone and light had been found and would be taken to the finish. “You have to make it to the end now!”

Fortunately I had my bank card with me as a backup. I wandered in, bought a large mocha from the Starbucks machine and went and sat with the other riders in the small seating area. After I finished my drink, I saw that the others around me still had plenty of things to consume and would be there for a while. I decided to have a nap, asking them to wake me up before they pushed off again. I went straight to sleep.

Before I knew it, I was getting a gentle shake of the shoulder to wake me up. I think I must have been asleep for 20 minutes or so, but this seemed to do the trick. We only had 30km to get to the finish. Dawn would be breaking soon and I figured that my internal clock wouldn’t be trying to drag me down into sleep again. I seemed to find a new lease of life, overtaking cyclists as I went and catching up with a lady who was going at a similar pace to me. There were a couple of climbs remaining, but I welcomed them; pumping the pedals standing up was much less likely to be something that I could fall asleep doing than rolling downhill or along a flat. I finally made it back to the finish at around 5:45am, almost three hours later than the year before but still with three hours to spare until the official cut-off time. My phone and light were waiting at the desk. I was so grateful to be there, having made it round in one piece, amongst the friendly and sympathetic faces of the wonderful volunteers. I called my wife and took up the offer of a toasted cheese sandwich while I waited for her to collect me.

I recently heard that everything in life is either a good time or a good story. This event felt like both. The organisation, the food, the caring volunteers staffing the controls all through the night, and the wonderful company of old and new friends all attempting the same crazy adventure made it something I won’t forget. I’m not sure I’ll tackle another 400km ride in a hurry, but I may join the volunteers next year.

Here’s a time-lapse video of my Strava ‘Flybys’, tracking every cyclist with a public route on Strava that I passed by during my ride, sped up 720 times. It’s mesmerising to watch. See if you can spot the two riders on their detour back to the Cotswolds!

  1. One of the things I love about Audax is that you get a simple ‘yes/no’ result at the end. There are no published times, and no prizes for riding faster. Those people who take close to the full allocated time, 27 hours in the case of a 400km event, are affectionately called ‘full value’ riders. ↩
  2. Later we discovered that he met up with Bruce again at the station, so they had each other for company as they shared a train ride home. ↩

🚴‍♂️ London-Wales-London 2025

Ever since I bought a bike back in 2013, I’ve been fascinated by long rides. It didn’t take long before I was venturing further than I could cope with. I remember that first summer, where I planned a route at home, printed out the cue sheet telling me what roads and turns to take, and held it awkwardly in my hand as I covered what felt like a gargantuan 70 miles. Neither the paper nor my fingers were in good shape after that ride, so I soon bought a cheap Garmin to make the route available to me through a handlebar-mounted sat-nav. It was revolutionary. The next year, in the early Spring, I managed my first century ride, covering 100 miles by riding to Silverstone and back. I had the bug. One year later — and ten years ago this month — I tackled Ride 999, a nine-day, 900 mile ride from London to Milan.

Last year I was on a business trip to New York when a friend from my cycling club announced that sign-ups for the 407km London-Wales-London Audax ride would open in the early hours the next day. This was the last thing at night for me, so I was in the perfect spot to secure a place. I’ve signed up to many events in the past that I’ve not shown up to, typically because of freezing temperatures or incessant rain. But I figured that for £29 it was worth it to at least have the option of riding. I signed up, paid the money, put it in the diary and went to bed.

Liam FitzPatrick, the enthusiastic organiser of the event, got in touch via email in late November and again at Christmas. These were handy reminders that I’d signed up to something significant. I think at this point I’d started to mentally commit to doing it, but knew — and kept telling anyone who would listen — that if there was torrential rain forecast for the whole weekend I wouldn’t feel bad about pulling out.

In late March, thoughts about the ride moved into the foreground. I read the super detailed and incredibly helpful pre-event notes in the emails that Liam sent out. We were well warned that rear flashing lights would not be tolerated under any circumstances. On Saturday mornings, I usually ride with the 16–17mph group at the bike club, but I knew that I would be much slower at this distance once refuelling stops and fatigue were factored in. At 12mph, setting off from the start at 6am would see me back to the final checkpoint by around 3am. I started to worry that my big front light wouldn’t last the ride. I bought it in 2021 to tackle a 300km Audax but had only used it for a couple of hours before consigning it to a drawer. Last week I tested it by charging it to full and running it flat, but I was still worried that it wouldn’t last for a whole night. Fortunately, the manufacturer created a rechargeable battery that straps to your bike to keep things going, so I picked one up from an online store. I also bought a second rear light so that I had a spare in case the first one wouldn’t last.

As the week of the ride arrived, I couldn’t stop myself from checking the weather forecast multiple times a day. Early in the week, Epic Ride Weather was predicting a bit of mid-ride rain, but as the days rolled by the probability of getting wet evaporated. Aside from the near-constant side wind, the biggest challenge was going to be the temperature changes. Cool when I set off from home, hot in the middle of the ride and then cold by the time we got back. I decided to buy arm warmers and leg warmers, bits of kit that I had never used before, as they could be easily taken off and stuffed into a jersey pocket or one of my small bike bags.

I was soon to find out the difference between ‘feels like 10°C’ and ‘feels like 4°C’.
I was soon to find out the difference between ‘feels like 10°C’ and ‘feels like 4°C’.

On Wednesday I took my bike for a safety check at my local bike shop and asked them to swap out my old brake pads for new ones. I’d bought the brake pads a few months ago as I realised I’d been riding my bike for a couple of years and hadn’t changed them. But I’ve never swapped disc brake pads over before and hadn’t got round to fitting them. I figured that trying to do it myself for the first time a few days before a big ride was a recipe for disaster. When I picked the bike up they told me that it was in good shape but would need a proper service soon. I also learned from them that brake disc rotors are a consumable part and that they wear out — I had no idea.

I took Friday off work to relax, eat, charge all the things and prep my kit so that I could just wake up and go on Saturday morning. Fellow rider Mary and I had agreed to meet in the high street at 4:30am for the hour-long ride to Chalfont St Peter, ideally picking up Dave and Ian on our way through Chesham, and giving us half an hour at the start to grab our brevet cards and faff about. I tried to get to bed early, but my excitement for the ride and anxiety that I would somehow miss my alarm meant that sleep was fragmented and light. I ended up waking just before 4am and turned off my alarms before they even went off.

Despite not being hungry at 4am, I wolfed down half a bowl of muesli and granola as I knew from past experience that a lot of the day would be about managing food consumption. I started to get my kit on. It was 10°C and rising outside, so I decided that I didn’t need to don my leg warmers. But I also didn’t have enough room to stuff them in anywhere. Not thinking clearly about the forecast, I left them at home. This was a mistake.

Ready to go, complete with a note left by my wife after I’d gone to bed.
Ready to go, complete with a note left by my wife after I’d gone to bed.

Mary was waiting for me in the High Street. After some quick hellos and knowing looks at each other that said ‘I can’t believe we’re up this early and doing this’, we hit our first hill of the day. I shared my live location to our group on WhatsApp so that Dave and Ian would be able to see when we were approaching their houses. We didn’t spot Dave, but Ian suddenly appeared behind us and quickly took the lead to guide us to the start.

There was a buzz in the air as the riders said hello to familiar faces and were greeted by the smiling volunteers who signed us in and handed each of us our Audax brevet card. This card has a box for each of the places that we are required to prove that we’ve been to, either by getting it validated by a volunteer at a mandatory control stop, writing down the answer to a question (such as ‘What is written on the house at X?’) or getting a time-stamped receipt from an ATM or a local shop. Each stop has both an earliest and latest time of arrival, with the gaps between them widening as the ride progresses. At the end of the ride, you hand over the completed card and receipts at the finish for final validation.

Checking in and anticipating what was to come.
Checking in and anticipating what was to come.

Some light breakfast items were on offer, so I made myself a couple of slices of toast that I slathered with butter and honey. It had been over an hour since my half bowl of muesli and I knew I’d have to keep forcing food down me, even when I didn’t feel like eating.

Second breakfast.
Second breakfast.

At the start we caught up with Dave, as well as Ed whom I hadn’t met before. One of the team had a longer than expected visit to the loo, so we finally got pedalling a few minutes after ride organiser Liam gave his introduction and set everybody off on their journey.

Listening to Liam Fitzpatrick give his final instructions before we set off.
Listening to Liam Fitzpatrick give his final instructions before we set off.
Ready to go at the start. (Photo: Ian Biller)
Ready to go at the start. (Photo: Ian Biller)

Our pace in the first stint was good, but probably a little too high. It can be difficult when riding in a group to slow down; you tend to be carried along by whoever is setting the pace at the front, tucking in behind them to take advantage of the drafting effect. If you lose the group, you may end up having to pedal even harder than when you were with them. We passed many groups and individual riders which gave me the impression that we were making good progress.

We soon reached the first mandatory control stop in Islip, 61km from the start. This is a typical distance for a Saturday morning club ride, but today we’d only covered 15% of the journey. The catering was superb, with sausage baps (even veggie ones), hash browns, croissants and all kinds of other breakfast things on offer. Two hours after my second breakfast, it was time for my third.

Third breakfast at the Islip control.
Third breakfast at the Islip control.

As we set off again, the sun was out and we had started to warm up. I wasn’t quite ready to put away my cosy gilet and arm warmers, but I think I took the gilet off somewhere along the way to Tewkesbury, our next stop at the 145km mark.

Setting off from Islip. (Photo: Ed Hems)
Setting off from Islip. (Photo: Ed Hems)

For the next stint, we started to drop Dave a little bit. He was never too far behind, but didn’t stay with the group. It was understandable given that he had run the London Marathon the weekend before; it was slightly crazy that he was doing this event at all. He had told me that the trick with a ride like this is that you need to ride it at your own pace, and he was absolutely right.

I always seem to look this pained when taking a bike-riding selfie.
I always seem to look this pained when taking a bike-riding selfie.

I’ve ridden through the beautiful villages of the Cotswolds quite a few times. Guiting Power is my favourite, a little oasis in the middle of rolling countryside. I’ve stopped there occasionally to refuel at The Old Post Office cafe, but not this time. We breezed through, passing people enjoying themselves as they spilled out across the street outside.

Tewkesbury was familiar to me as I stopped there on my previous Audax ride. As we entered the town we stopped to regroup. As we waited, we were approached by the town crier dressed in fabulous full regalia. I resisted the urge to ask him “what have you come as?” He was good-humoured and told us that he was new in the job. Looking him up after the ride, I found out that his name is Richard Whincup and he has been on an incredible journey to overcoming a profound stammer and land this role.

The Tewkesbury Town Crier. I resisted the opening quip of “What have you come as?” (Photo: Ian Biller)
The Tewkesbury Town Crier. I resisted the opening quip of “What have you come as?” (Photo: Ian Biller)

I remembered where I stopped for food last time and suggested we roll through the town to find it again. Coffee #1 was just what we needed. Locking our bikes together outside the shop we bought ourselves coffees, crisps, cakes and toasted sandwiches.

Before I knew it, we were rolling again, this time tackling the 41km to Walford, situated right next to Ross-on-Wye. This was the only information control of the ride — where we had to write down the answer to a question on the brevet card — before continuing to ride another 28km to Chepstow, just inside the Welsh border.

Climbing up Symonds Yat was hard. I’ve done longer and more difficult climbs, but this was the closest that I’ve ever come to getting off of the bike and walking. I was out of the saddle and grinding away in first gear, huffing and puffing my way to the top, where I found the others waiting.

Made it up the Symonds Yat climb! (Photo: Ian Biller)
Made it up the Symonds Yat climb! (Photo: Ian Biller)

As we set off again, things started to get weird. I didn’t feel like I could keep up with Ian, Mary and Ed and let them go. I needed to ride at my own pace. They soon disappeared out in front. Dave also disappeared from behind me, so for the first time I was on my own. I was feeling bizarre; a little light-headed, cold and shivery despite the sun beating down on us. I wasn’t bonking as I still had energy to pedal, but I didn’t feel like I was making good decisions such as where I was steering. The ride into Chepstow is via a series of descents, which I perhaps should have slowed more on than I did. Arriving at the border I found the others waiting for me, greeting me with shouts of “You’re in Wales!” I think my response was “I feel a bit f— up”, which quickly changed the mood. They sprang into action, quickly agreeing that we should head to control. I gingerly made my way through the town and got stuck at a traffic light that turned red after everyone else had all passed through. When the light went green I struggled to clip back into my pedal and instead rode my bike up the hill like I was on a skateboard, propelling myself along with my left foot. I missed the turn to the control and ended up at a difficult and busy junction. Instincts told me that I had gone too far, so I called Ian to check. Trundling back down the hill, I found the building and parked up. I was so grateful for the stop.

A week later, Ian told me that at this point he wanted to tell me to quit as I looked dreadful, but he decided not to say anything as he felt it was each rider’s decision as to whether they could do it and wanted to continue. All I remember was that the others cared about me and were keen to make sure I got some food and warmed up.

I sat shivering as we sat eating delicious bowls of chilli and drinking tea. After the second bowl, I turned my attention to the home-made cakes on the tables, munching away on the most delicious ginger cake. I was starting to feel a bit like myself again. I’m still not sure if I was dehydrated, low on sugar, or if something else was going on.

I’ve never needed a bowl of chilli more. (Photo: Ed Hems)
I’ve never needed a bowl of chilli more. (Photo: Ed Hems)

All of the volunteers at the stops were so incredibly lovely. At this stop they asked us to bring our water bottles inside and put them on a table. By the time we were ready to leave we found that they had been refilled for us.

I think this is where I started to find things a little tough mentally. It had been a good, solid ride to Wales but now it was early evening — albeit a beautiful one — and I knew we had to cycle all the way back again. We set off as a group of five and made our way down to the old Severn Bridge that crosses the River Wye before spanning the River Severn. Crossing the bridge is a sweet moment when you realise that you’ve made it there from home, under your own steam on two wheels.

Across the Severn Bridge (Photo: Ed Hems)
Across the Severn Bridge (Photo: Ed Hems)

As we got to the end of the bridge I realised I couldn’t keep up with Ed, Mary and Ian. I hung back with Dave for a few minutes, but the next time I looked behind me he was quite far behind me, so I decided to keep ‘tapping it out’ at my own pace. This was the first ride I’ve done where I’ve been conscious of my heart rate, which I made visible on my Garmin’s default screen. I tried to keep it at or below a number where I know from an ‘active recovery’ ride on my indoor trainer that I’m working, but not too hard. At this point, I mentally resigned myself to riding the rest of the route on my own. I figured that if I could just keep turning the pedals and keeping my heart rate where I wanted it, eventually I’d make it to the next stop. The sun had started to go down, so I stopped to turn on my lights.

Riding alone is a very different experience to riding in a group. I find that my inner monologue doesn’t shut up, and I have to try and keep it on positive thoughts or listening to whatever music is on my ‘inner radio’. Just keep going Andrew, you’ll get there. My main focus at this point was on keeping the chilli and cakes down. A climb took me to what I now know is the Somerset Monument, a giant column at the top of a hill, but I could only think “oh, that’s interesting” as I didn’t know what it was at the time.

The Somerset Monument. When I cycled up to this I was on my own and had no idea what it was. (Photo: Ed Hems)
The Somerset Monument. When I cycled up to this I was on my own and had no idea what it was. (Photo: Ed Hems)

I kept pedalling. Passing some roadworks and reaching the top of the hill I came across a petrol station, which I thought would be a great place to refill my water bottles. As I pulled in I found Mary, Ian and Ed had also pulled up. I was baffled when they told me that they had only been there for a couple of minutes or so; I hadn’t been riding hard, and yet there they were. Ed suggested that we ride as a group from this point onwards as it was now dusk and the temperature had started to drop. I protested and told them to go on if they felt they could do it — I figured that nobody wanted to be out longer than necessary (not that any of this ride was strictly necessary) — but they insisted. Inside, I was so glad.

Cycling into dusk. (Photo: Ian Biller)
Cycling into dusk. (Photo: Ian Biller)

The next control, at Lambourn, was over 100km on from our previous stop. Our big night lights went on before we got to the checkpoint. I found myself getting dazzled by some of the rear lights from riders ahead. I should have cleaned my glasses as they were covered in sweat stains and salt, which gave me a lot of glare. It felt better when I was on the front of our group, but I wasn’t strong enough to take the lead role for very long.

Dark and difficult. (Photo: Ian Biller)
Dark and difficult. (Photo: Ian Biller)

When I wasn’t thinking about how cold I was getting, riding in the dark was special. Owls darted in front of us as they flew from one tree to another. Rabbits decided it was a great time to run across the road as we approached, at one point causing us to brake heavily to avoid hitting one, as it suffered from indecision of which way to turn.

Lambourn was a beautiful sight as the outdoor team with reflective jackets and torches directed us towards the control. They told us that we could wheel our bikes into the hall, which meant there was less faffing around to secure them and find the things we wanted to bring in. Empathy oozed from the volunteers as they told us what a fantastic job we had done to get this far. They couldn’t have been more thoughtful and caring, offering us tea, coffee, biscuits, beans on toast, more bowls of hot chilli and words of encouragement. I wasn’t hungry, but I knew I had to keep eating, piling some fig rolls and Bourbon creams on top of the beans on toast. I was now really struggling to get warm — I really could have done with those leg warmers that I left at home — and asked the group whether they minded me getting another hot drink before we set off. At this point, I remember texting my wife and saying that I didn’t want to go out again. Dave turned up as we were finishing our food and getting ready to leave. It was so good to see him, but I didn’t have a lot of chat and banter left in me. This would be the last time we’d meet on the ride.

Lambourn. The last time we saw Dave. I’m texting my wife to say I didn’t want to go back out in the cold again. (Photos: Ian Biller)
Lambourn. The last time we saw Dave. I’m texting my wife to say I didn’t want to go back out in the cold again. (Photos: Ian Biller)
I really didn’t want to go out again. But I knew I would. Having come this far, I couldn’t abandon the ride now.
I really didn’t want to go out again. But I knew I would. Having come this far, I couldn’t abandon the ride now.

On a ride like this you get to see the same people, sometimes passing them or having them pass you if one of you is faster but spends more time at the controls. In my head I’d started recognising ‘Great Britain Lady’ (who was wearing a white ‘Great Britain’ cycling top) and ‘Long White-Haired Guy and his Black-Coated Female Friend’. At this control it amused me that someone else started talking about ‘Great Britain Lady’ out loud.

The hot drinks caught up with me on our way to Henley-on-Thames. I wasn’t alone; two of our group stopped for a wee which I only noticed when they later overtook me, surprising me as I thought they were in front. Our next destination was a petrol station in Henley where we had to pick up a receipt, but I wasn’t sure whether there would be a toilet. Finding a convenient gate next to a field where I could park my bike, I made a sudden decision to stop. I did what I needed to do, got bitten a couple of times in the legs and then tried to set off again. It was here that I learned how much I rely on visual feedback when I clip into my pedals. I tried a few times and failed, so eventually had to point one of my front lights towards the floor so I could see what I was doing. I was now on my own, but not for long; in another act of kindness, I found Ian waiting for me at a junction a few hundred metres up the road. Little things like this mean so, so much when you’re cold and tired. I was feeling quite emotional.

The petrol station at Henley was a bizarrely happy memory. We queued to use the Starbucks self-serve coffee machine. I grabbed myself a hot chocolate and a Cadbury’s Boost, remembering to ask for a receipt and wondering how many Audax riders fail because they forget the receipt part. It was 1:15am and we were sitting around in a petrol station with a bunch of knackered strangers who were also on the same crazy quest. As I queued to use the toilet — they had one, after all — another rider said to me, “You’re not doing okay, are you?” I told him that I hadn’t packed enough warm clothes and was freezing cold. He said “come here”, put his arms around me and gave me a warm hug for about five minutes, with his wife — a fellow rider — standing beside us.

We were now only 32km from the ‘arrivee’, our final control back at the start. This was half the distance of a usual Saturday morning club ride. Despite being cold, I knew I could do it.

1:15am in a petrol station in Henley.
1:15am in a petrol station in Henley.

We got ready to set off, but just as we were about to go I saw that the LED indicators on my lights had turned red, which meant they were about to run out of charge. I changed the rear one and then faffed around with the front, plugging it into the battery pack. The others could have got annoyed at me, but they didn’t.

The last stretch of the journey was bizarre. We found ourselves going up a single track road at 2:30am to suddenly hear the surprising shout of “car back” followed by a reply of “really‽” Why were these cars going up such a remote road at this time of night? The climbs were feeling larger than they were, but it wasn’t surprising after more than 400km of riding.

We rolled into Chalfont St Peter at 3am, greeted by yet more amazingly chipper volunteers. Once again they let us roll our bikes into the control, which made everything just that little bit easier. I recognised Richard Bragg at the validation table, who made quick work of reviewing and stamping our cards to say that we’d completed the course. We’d done it!

My completed brevet card. Six hours to spare.
My completed brevet card. Six hours to spare.

The volunteers offered us a bowl of pasta and some cherry Bakewell cakes because…why not? I started to think about whether pasta at 3am made any sense, but quickly put the thought out of my mind. Trying to make sense of everything again could start tomorrow.

My cuddly friend rolled in a few minutes later. As we ate and contemplated what we had done, he kindly offered me his waterproof jacket for my 25km ride back to my house, provided I posted it back to him. I said thanks but no; I thought I’d be able to tackle the route home without too much trouble. How much colder could I get in the space of an hour?

All done, ready to head back into the night for the hour ride home.
All done, ready to head back into the night for the hour ride home.

Ian guided us back to Chesham, and from there we knew the way back to Berkhamsted via the main roads. Climbing out of Chesham to Ashley Green I lost Mary but caught her again at the top. We parted ways as we finally entered Berkhamsted, with the sun coming up. I live on a hill and usually ride up my steep driveway, but I wasn’t going to attempt it today. I found that I couldn’t unclip from my pedal outside my house so had to crawl past it to the top of the hill, unclip and then walk back down. It was 5am, the sun was coming up, and I could see the mist from my breath across the beam of my front light.

A shower wasn’t enough to warm me up. I found some pyjamas and got into bed, shivering. Eventually I got to sleep.

A week on from the ride, my main feeling is one of gratitude. For Liam FitzPatrick, who had organised a brilliant event, for the volunteers that looked after us at all of the major controls, and for my riding companions who showed so much empathy and care, particularly when I had the ‘Chepstow dip’. Despite at some point asking my friends never to let me sign up to anything like this again, I’ve already been peeking at the Audax calendar to see what’s next.

🚴 Power drift on a Stages SB20

I’ve been using a Stages SB20 trainer at home for over a year. I love it, jumping in the saddle three or four times a week to tackle a TrainerRoad workout. The idea behind TrainerRoad is that you aim to hit a specific power output for each ‘interval’ within a ride, whilst keeping your feet spinning at an optimal cadence of between 85 and 95 revolutions per minute. For a while, I’ve been noticing that towards the end of a ride I may end up in a higher gear than I started, despite being asked to hit the same measured power output as an interval at the start. I don’t understand what’s going on.

Today I tackled Low Saddle, a 1h45m ride that includes a single 1h33m ‘interval’ at a steady power output. My completed ride is shown in the diagram below. The top of the blue shape represents the power target that TrainerRoad wanted me to hit, the yellow line is my measured power output and the red line is my heart rate.

My completed Low Saddle TrainerRoad ride

My completed Low Saddle TrainerRoad ride

Once I finish a ride it gets automatically uploaded to Strava, which provides further analysis. A ride like Low Saddle is perfect for illustrating the issue. In the charts below you can see that my power output stays roughly the same throughout the ride whereas my ‘speed’ drifts from 25km/h to 29km/h and my cadence from 95rpm to 105rpm. This is a massive difference that I can really feel over the course of a ride. I’m glad it isn’t my mind playing tricks on me.

Power, Heart Rate, Speed and Cadence from the Strava analysis of my ride

Power, Heart Rate, Speed and Cadence from the Strava analysis of my ride

The SB20 trainer has a power meter on each crank. I’m not sure whether the problem is that:

  1. The measured power output from the power meters falls off during a ride, forcing me to push harder to keep the same measured power output, or
  2. The resistance on the trainer eases up over the course of the ride, meaning that I need to turn the cranks faster to maintain the same power output.

Does anyone know if there is something I can do to find out?

Update 12 February 2026

Reader Mike emailed me to say that he had the same issue. Stages went out of business but have now been acquired by Giant, so he emailed their customer support team. This was their response, which Mike agreed to let me share here:

I’d be happy to begin the troubleshooting process now to see if we can resolve your issue. This is a classic case of “Resistance Drift,” a phenomenon specific to electromagnetic brake systems under sustained thermal load. The SB20 uses a large electromagnetic coil to create resistance against the flywheel. As copper gets hotter, its electrical resistance increases. This makes it harder for the Lower PCB to push the same amount of current through the coil. If the current drops due to heat, the magnetic field weakens. A weaker magnetic field means less resistance at the flywheel, which is why your cadence “runs away” from you (spinning 10+ RPM higher) even though you haven’t changed your effort or gear.

1) Check your bike’s firmware is on the latest version. Update firmware on your Stages SB20 smart bike

2)  Increase Airflow. Try to have a high-powered fan aimed not just at yourself, but at the front-right side of the bike shroud. There are vents near the flywheel; getting cool air into those vents helps the coil dissipate heat and maintains a more consistent magnetic field.

3 If the drift is becoming a hurdle for your training, ERG mode is the technical solution. In ERG, the bike’s “brain” constantly monitors your power output. If the resistance starts to “ease up” due to heat, the bike will automatically increase the current to the magnets to keep you exactly at your target wattage, regardless of your cadence. See. Recommended Settings – Zwift

4) It problem continues, then the Lower PCB most likely needs to be replaced.

Please let me know if any of the above steps helped solve the problem, or if you would like a one time 30% discount code towards the purchase of a lower PCB board.

Thanks so much for this, Mike. It makes a lot of sense. I might investigate activating ERG mode, but I’m a little nervous about how that would feel versus using the gears as I do now.

Exercise or sleep?

It was a struggle today. I only managed just over four hours’ sleep last night. I was up just very early this morning in order to fit my indoor bike trainer session in before an early work meeting.

I’m very surprised it was as high as 67%!

I’m very surprised it was as high as 67%!

I had planned to go to bed earlier, but we have a young teenager who has just moved into the ‘not tired at night’ phase and it doesn’t yet feel right to leave him to shut down the house while we ascend the wooden hill.

Due to the lockdown I am missing the hour of walking that used to be part of my daily commute to and from the office, so since March I’ve been prioritising exercise on most days. I enjoy exercise for its own sake, but it’s also motivating that there are numerous articles about how desk-based jobs are literally killing us:

Both the total volume of sedentary time and its accrual in prolonged, uninterrupted bouts are associated with all-cause mortality, suggesting that physical activity guidelines should target reducing and interrupting sedentary time to reduce risk for death.

But…other research says that lack of sleep may lead to Alzheimer’s disease in later life. I remember hearing how Margaret Thatcher got by on four hours’ sleep a night, making her the “best informed person in the room” according to her biographer; she suffered from dementia in her final years.

A wise man that once worked with me said “you can’t cheat the body”, and he’s right. But given the choice between exercising and sleeping, what’s the right balance to strike?

🚴‍♂️ Getting started with indoor bike training

Given how much time people are spending indoors due to the coronavirus, I thought it might be useful to write down some quick thoughts on how to get riding your road bike in your house.

My son’s road bike on the turbo trainer

My son’s road bike on the turbo trainer

It doesn’t cost that much to get started with an indoor setup. The main thing is to have the space to do it in, and some tolerant neighbours if you don’t live in a detached property. First, you’ll need a road bike — and this post assumes you have one already. From that point, you will need:

The basics

  • A turbo trainer
    • These range from low-end like the one I have, a Tacx Blue Motion for about £180, to very, very expensive.
    • The cheaper ones work by running your back tyre against a resistance wheel. Generally, the more you pay the greater the range of resistance, i.e. you can pedal harder. The trainers come with a ‘skewer’ that goes through the middle of the back wheel, replacing the one you already have, and this allows it to be seated into the clamp that keeps the bike in place (see picture below).

Basic resistance wheel trainer, bike clamped in place

Basic resistance wheel trainer, bike clamped in place

  • The more expensive ones let you remove your back wheel and plug your bike straight onto a set of cogs. They can sometimes also electronically adjust the resistance as you ride along, to simulate going up a hill, for example.
    • It’s probably worth getting a cheaper one first to see if you can develop the habit, you can always eBay it afterwards if you want to upgrade.
  • A mat
    • To keep sweat off of your floor. You will sweat a lot on a turbo trainer so this is well worth an investment.
    • I have a Giant mat, which is about £30, and comes with a bag for storage.
    • Any other exercise mat will probably work just as well.
  • A water bottle
    • To replace the sweat!
  • A floor standing fan
    • I think I already mentioned that you sweat a lot when riding indoors. Trust me, you need this. Even on days where it is so cold you can barely stand around in your shorts, you need this to be on maximum before you get going.

That’s the basics. You can happily hop on and ride along, watching TV or listening to your favourite workout music. BUT…it is pretty boring, and tough to go for longer than half an hour without wanting to get off.

Making it fun

To do this, you’ll need a couple of extra things:

  • A speed and cadence sensor
    • These attach to the bike and will measure how fast you are going (by how often your back wheel is rotating) and how quickly you are pedalling. The data will feed into an app that you set up on your computer/tablet/phone via Bluetooth.
    • A good one is the Wahoo RPM. It will set you back around £55.
  • A heart rate monitor (optional)
    • Not essential by any means, but very useful to see how hard you are working. You will get used to knowing when your heart is reaching maximum output and can get feedback from the various apps to see how hard you have been pushing.
    • You may already have one if you own a smart watch.
    • I have a Wahoo Tickr (about £40) which straps across my chest and pairs with apps via Bluetooth.
  • Apps
    • With the speed and cadence sensor you can download an app to your phone such as Polar Beat, Wahoo Fitness, or loads of others, pair up your devices and just ride. They will track all of the data and keep a record of what you’ve done. You can then upload your workouts to Strava and share with your friends.
    • More fun is to use an app. Zwift is really popular as it looks like an arcade game, and the harder you pedal the faster you move through the virtual terrain.
    • I use TrainerRoad which is a bit more data-focused; you tell it what turbo trainer you are using and what resistance setting you are on and then it will give you a workout programme where you have to continually hit a target power output. It takes the bordom away completely, and there’s a massive sense of accomplishment at the end of a long or hard ride.
    • There are loads of other apps available.

You can go further than this. I have a cheap spare wheel which has a specific indoor training tyre attached to it, so I don’t wear out the one I use on the road too quickly. But the best advice is to make a small investment — you can always upgrade later if you find that you get the bug.

What a ride

It hit me like a brick. As soon as I saw the inflated red finish line in the car park of the hotel in Milan I felt completely overwhelmed. It was so unexpected—for the past couple of miles we had been leisurely cycling our way to the end, laughing and joking as we had for so much of the 900 miles beforehand. For these last few miles we were taking it steady as we were accompanied by ‘Tour Dad’ Fred, the amazing father of one of our riders and core organisers of the trip, who hadn’t been on a bike since he was fourteen. We had also agreed to come over the finish line as a team. I didn’t expect to be overcome with emotion but I couldn’t help it—everything seemed to converge all at once. All of a sudden I now knew that I wouldn’t be getting up for another ride tomorrow with these amazing people. I couldn’t help but think about all of the training hours that I had put in since January, spending time away from my beautiful and incredibly supportive wife and children to get fit, my short stay in hospital that I thought was going to set me back so much and of course all of the donations and words of encouragement from my colleagues, friends and family. And now it had slipped through my fingers and was almost gone, just as soon as it seemed to get started, and it choked me up. It was one of the most amazing nine-day periods of my life.

But I’m getting ahead of myself!

I sincerely apologise for not having been able to write a blog at the end of each evening while I was away. As I said in my last couple of posts everything was such an incredible rush. A typical day started with an alarm at 6:40am, hurriedly getting dressed into cycle gear and filling my pockets with stuff (energy gels on the left, energy bars and spare Garmin in the middle, technical items on the right) that I had carefully laid out the night before, heading down for a big breakfast (muesli, three to four croissants, scrambled egg on toast, tons of orange juice and a cup of tea), making sure I had the appropriate things on my body (for the weather) and in my day bag (in case the weather turned), loading things onto the van, getting going on the bike, stopping for a rest in the morning after 25–35 miles, grabbing lunch in the early afternoon, having another brief refuelling stop a few miles later, rolling into the hotel in the early evening, showering, going for dinner, laying out stuff for the next day and going to bed. Repeat x9. People, myself included, started to get very blurry after a few days as to what had happened when—we would recount a funny tale of having to follow a Garmin route up some stairs the day before only to be corrected that it actually took place that morning. There was little time to reflect and think let alone write things down. I’ll try and correct that now.

Things I had left out of my blog post of the first couple of days

Over the course of the trip we were very lucky to have such few incidents on the bikes. The crashes that did take place happened on the first couple of days. Aside from a plethora of low-speed “Argh! I can’t clip out of my pedals!” events the worst two crashes were (a) Nicky Bollard (nee Lampard) riding head-first into a metal post and giving her legs a proper bruising (see below) and (b) Dean ‘Woah, Deano’ Keeling having his front wheel taken out by an erratic move by ‘Uncle’ Phil while they were riding at speed. Dean’s accident was relatively serious in that he suffered cuts and bruises and was saved from facial scraping by his helmet going along the ground; he was fine but it was a good early reminder for us all to be careful.

After the near-mutinies related to people being rushed for breakfast, lunch and dinner we tried a new approach of setting out in a number of different groups with the slower riders leaving at 7:15am and one or two other groups following up to 8:15am. This worked really well as generally we were roughly in the same place by lunchtime and nobody needed to add indigestion to their list of cycling-related ailments.

Day four: Eindhoven to Spa

Day four started as day three had ended with lots of cycling along big long Dutch cycle paths. We hadn’t quite got into our stride of riding in a group and didn’t spend too much time in a chain gang. I remember this day as being pretty wet and having roads that stretched out towards a vanishing point, like a more sedate and unspectacular Dutch version of an Eagles album cover.

Entering Belgium was a shock after the luxury and beauty of the Dutch roads—the pot holes and poor road surfacing was like switching from a triple-quilted brand of toilet roll to the green paper towels that we used to use at primary school. We had to be on our game a lot more now.

At the end of the day as we approached Spa we encountered our first proper taste of hills. I half welcomed them after the endless flats of the past 48 hours but relatively speaking they were little beasts that left us with a sense of foreboding:

I had also started to develop some deep ravines in my thumbs which meant I had to tape them up each day for the rest of the event so that they didn’t get any worse:

Day 4: Spa to Luxembourg

I distinctly recall pinching myself at the end of this day and saying to myself that ‘I rode to Luxembourg on my fricking bike!’ which seemed like an apt thing to do after riding to Luxembourg from London. On a bike.

Today started as the previous one had finished. Immediately after leaving the hotel we had to tackle a 1,000ft climb, leaving us with stomachs that threatened to eject their freshly-ingested contents onto the Belgian tarmac. By the time we had got to pit stop one we had barely gone anywhere and I started to get worried about the time we would be getting to the hotel that evening.

A comedy moment happened just after we past the Spa racing circuit. Our Garmins (or ‘vermins’ as they came to be known) were telling us to go up a service road. This was obviously wrong—it was clear from the map that the tool was planning an ill-advised short-cut and we should go on and take the hairpin bend a few hundred yards away. Gayle (daughter of ‘Tour Dad’ Fred) asked me “shall we go on?” and I had barely muttered “Yes, but…” before she and two other riders had rolled down the hill, missed the hairpin and continued going at speed until they disappeared from view. Being the gentleman that I am, I waited with the others at the hairpin for their return. Someone more valiant than me went to fetch them and returned some 20-30 minutes later. It turned out that the two girls in the group had their Garmins off and the guy following them was, well, following them.

Other highlights of the day for me were seeing the monument to Sean Kelly (see below) and experiencing some amazing drafting as we rode in a group. In the long line of bicycles I couldn’t believe how much speed we could carry up hills—I would never get to those speeds riding solo—and that downhill my trusty cyclocross bike runs out of gears at about 33mph!

By this point in the trip we had a firmly established ‘late crew’ who would hit the beers as soon as they were showered and ready for dinner and stay up until at least 2am every night. I remember thinking ‘I don’t know how they do it’ and then realising that at 38 years of age I was one of the older ones on the trip. Seeing them drink with little ill-effect was giving me beer-envy and I started to dabble in a drink myself, just one or two, for the remainder of the event each night. Tom ‘The Voice’ Osborne entertained us in the hotel bar this evening, aided with much hilarity by ‘Uncle’ Phil:

Day 5: Luxembourg to Nancy
We were joined today by a guest rider, Emma Littmoden, daughter of Penny Ferguson who was one of our corporate sponsors. Emma was a great rider and really held her own. She even brought a camera crew with her who made this lovely video of the day:

https://vimeo.com/129694866

We also managed to get a great average speed today thanks to an incredibly long and relatively flat cycle path and the wonders of a chain gang. It was so much fun rolling along at 22mph as a group, eating up the miles as we went.

Nancy itself was beautiful (the little we saw of it) and I wished we could have spent a little more time there.

Day 6: Nancy to Freiburg

This ended up being my biggest day of riding ever (so far), clocking in at a whopping 127 miles, beating my previous record of 120 which I had set on a day’s training where I rode from Berkhamsted to Wimbledon, did a 40-mile loop in the Surrey hills and rode back to Berkhamsted again. In summary, it was a long way. Today’s ride included a fantastic climb in the Vosges region of France up the Col De La Schlucht, high enough to have a ski lift at the top of it.

The descent down The Schlucht saw one of our riders hit a top speed of almost 100km/h (about 61mph)!

Day 7: Zurich to Feldkirch

Today we were joined by the CEO of one of our corporate sponsors, who planned to ride the whole segment on a bike without Lycra or clipless pedals. We started the day with a sleepy train journey from Freiburg to Zurich which felt a little bit like cheating as we effectively skipped 100 miles or so, but was the only way we could cover the distance to a major city in the nine days—Ride 101010 doesn’t really have the same ring to it, does it? As luck would have it, our seats were double-booked and so we had a free upgrade to first class which although comfortable, didn’t get us out of having to pay £5 for a cup of tea!

At the coach park near Zurich train station it dawned on us how far we had come in terms of a complete lack of decorum in relation to our calls of nature. Gone were the early days where we were looking for a secluded quiet bush or tree to relieve ourselves of the coffee, tea and electrolyte-infused water that had been weighing us down—now we all seemed quite happy to go right in the middle of a major urban area with a wholly inadequate small bush and wire fence to hide our shame. Not great!

Heading out of Zurich was the first time that we had a glimpse of what was to come—the Alps loomed large and beckoned us towards them. We knew that tomorrow we would be making our ascent. For now though we were very happy with a long drag out of Zurich along the lake and down through the alpine valleys. Here we found the most beautiful place ever for lunch, beside a lake with the sun shining and mountains all around us. Most people went for a swim, being careful to avoid the swans, and there was even time for a post-lunch swimming race between a couple of riders.

Views: Quarten, Switzerland by Andrew Doran

Day 8: Feldkirch to Campodolcino

Only one phrase had been dominating my thoughts since I signed up to the ride and learned the route we were taking—The Splügen Pass. Today was always going to be about the climbing. The past few days had taught me that I was pretty average going along the flats but the big climbs were where I could push a bit harder and although we were all helping each other along a nine-day endurance event there were a few of us that secretly/not-so-secretly did want to get one over on the other faster riders.

Most of the day was spent climbing but we did hit an early descent which saw me clock my fastest speed ever of almost 52mph. It felt absolutely amazing and thrilling to be going that fast and I felt such a buzz when I got to the bottom.

After the fast descent we spent most of the rest of the day on a long, shallow climb which slowly got steeper. It felt as though our lunch stop took forever to get to. After we had refuelled, we set off up a few switchbacks and I made good progress—before I knew it I was whizzing past a scheduled rest stop, eager to get on with the climb. I found myself on my own and stopped on the little descent into the village of Splügen which saw the start of the ascent proper.

The Splügen Pass climb was unlike anything I had done before. It wasn’t that it was exceptionally steep, it was more that it seemed to go on forever. Up the hill from the village, turning right onto the first set of switchbacks before hitting another mile or so of straights before starting again on an even longer set of switchbacks, this time with more and more snow around me and less and less oxygen. You could easily see back down the road you had been on and view the riders that were pursuing you (as I said, it wasn’t a race but there was something primal in me that wanted to stay ahead) but you couldn’t see what was up ahead or how long it would go on for. Sweat and mucus dripped from my face but I was beyond caring—all I wanted to do was to maintain some kind of rhythm and get to the top, ideally without being overtaken. I was looking at the snow and marvelling at how it could remain on the ground when it was so warm and then only when I stopped for a while did I realise just how cold it was up there. Later, I was gutted to find that I had stopped short of the end of the Strava segment up the pass and couldn’t see the time it had taken me—luckily Veloviewer came to the rescue and showed that it was almost 50 minutes to complete the ascent.

Getting to the top was an incredible moment—we literally felt on top of the world and that we had achieved something. The crew from the event organisers Action Challenge were waiting at the top and were fantastic—they made sure that they drilled the point home that what we had done was a real triumph. Aside from catching our breath and in one case even retching from the effort we started to realise that we had conquered the biggest climb on the trip. It was fantastic. To make it even better, we all waited at the top for every single member of the group to come up—all of whom made it—to share in the joy at having taken on the mountain and won.

By the time everyone had arrived at the top we were all freezing. We were covered in sweat and knew that we now had to tackle the first part of the descent down the other side so took time to add a layer or two and get ready.

The ride down was crazy. The Italian roads were similar to Belgium’s but even worse and this time we were travelling downhill at speed. We travelled through a bizarre, cold, barren landscape of rocks, snow, water, road and very little else. I had to stop and take a picture of the eeriness.

We also had our first taste of Italian tunnels, some of which would turn out to be truly terrifying over the next 24 hours—broken lights, sounds of vehicles that seemed to come from everywhere at once, traffic lights and roadworks in the tunnels themselves—as we made our way down the Alps.

It took us no time at all to reach our alpine lodge at Campodolcino and settle in for the night. Given the epic achievement of the day we were keen to let our hair down. Most of us had a pretty late night which was eased along by a ‘kangaroo court’ game where we were each accused of something and forced to drink a shot of disgusting grappa if found guilty (or innocent, for that matter) and pay a forefeit. The whole thing had the atmosphere of a sixth-form trip about it and that was no bad thing.

Day 9: Campodolcino to Milan

The final day saw us setting off down the mountain descent which had been cut very short the day before. We had barely gone a mile before I witnessed one of the riders in front of me experiencing a brief case of speed wobble. All he had done was to ride over a different-coloured patch of asphalt but at the speed we were going it sent some bizarre vibrations through his bike. It looked scary from where I was and he told me later that he thought he was going to crash but it was over in the blink of an eye and he carried on down the hill.

The heavens opened on us early on and we found ourselves working our way towards Lake Como in a biblical downpour. Once you’re wet, you’re wet and there’s nothing to do but to plough on. It was a struggle to see at times as rain came at my face vertically from above and also below from the rear wheel of the rider in front but somehow we made it there without incident and in good time.

Confidence had built up massively over the previous days and quite a few of us now felt pretty adept at riding extremely close to each other. This gave us a dramatic advantage in terms of speed and exertion in exactly the same way as a flock of birds support each other by flying in formation. This, coupled with the thought that we didn’t need to leave anything in our legs as we had no other days left to ride, led to a extremely fast and thrilling day. Four of us ended up together in an early afternoon session where we were as close together as we could possibly be. The environment changed around us and I was oblivious to it except where we went through tunnels, but even then I continued to focus on the rear wheel ahead of me. Keeping going at a steady 23mph for miles on end when you usually potter around at 16–17mph was amazing—we ploughed through the route with ease. After lunch I found myself in another group where we raced along as fast as we could go; all of the usual niceties of group riding such as pointing out potholes and other hazards were out of the window as we pushed with all our might and tried to cling into each others’ paths. I’d never been in this situation before and it was incredible—when we all ended up at the next rest stop it literally had me laughing with joy at the fun we had just experienced. I felt like a teenager again.

Before I knew it we had come to the end of the racing and were entering Monza and the outskirts of Milan where traffic lights naturally brought the speed down. We had all agreed that we would reassemble as a team before heading to the finish line. ‘Tour Dad’ Fred was going to get on a bike and we would come across the finish line as we had started, all together again but this time with thoughts of what we had collectively achieved. We laughed and joked our way there, stopping for a final break at a cafe where we were served bucket loads of tapas alongside beer and coffee before heading on. You know the rest.

Epilogue

On any number of levels this is one of the most amazing things I have ever done. Signing up to the ride was a massive commitment for my wife and I—we spent £1,400 of our savings on the entry fee, I had to raise at least £2,000 in sponsorship which seemed like an incredible hurdle at the time and I then had to train so hard for it, spending time away from my family in order to get the miles in. The night I signed up I immediately went to bed and proceeded to have the worst, most stressful night’s sleep for many years; it brought back vivid memories of some dark days I experienced at university and was a useful reminder of why the Get Connected service is so important for the young people who need their support.

The response from my friends, family and colleagues has been overwhelming and I have so far raised over £4,300; as a group we have hit our £120,000 target which is incredible. Thank you so much to everyone who has helped to support this invaluable service. The people involved in the event—at the charity, with the event organisers Action Challenge and the riders themselves—have all been wonderful to get to know and I feel truly privileged to have had the opportunity to take part. The memory of the trip will stay with me forever.

In Luxembourg, 400 miles in!

We are dashing through our trip and have so little time each day to fit in time to call home, write a blog post, process the day’s thoughts from the ride etc. As I said in my last post I’ll write this trip up properly when I get back. For now, please take a look at my Flickr photo stream and Twitter for my latest updates. There is also a Facebook group with posts from lots of others. Will write more soon!

On to Nancy tomorrow…

Two days in

I’m lying here in my bed in the Pullman Hotel in Eindhoven having earlier today finished 101 miles of cycling from the Hook of Holland. To say I am tired would be an understatement!

The trip so far has been incredible—all of the riders are lovely and there has been enough banter to keep us going. This is great because we always seem to be in a major rush—we’re up early, breakfasted and on the road early and then whistling through the day with riding, two brief rest stops and a little bit of time for lunch. I’m already thinking that I am going to have to post some short highlights here and then pull together a more substantial post about the trip when I’m back and have had time to process my thoughts. Apologies if this is incoherent!

Here are a few notes about the journey so far…

Day one

London to Harwich was a good way to get us started. A beautiful morning, a fun and well-equipped start line (coffee and three croissants on top of those I had before I left the house!), rain within a couple of hours of leaving (I’m sure we’ll need to get used to it) and then brightening up as the day wore on. We ended up finishing the day in a few different groups as the hills, relatively small as they were, split us up. I came in on my own behind the main front pack and didn’t feel too bad body-wise. Lunch and dinner were both a mad rush and there were near-mutinies when people were told they would have to skip their puddings! We had showers at the pub and then a fun 2mi slow ride in the dark from the pub to the passenger port.

Some other pics:

At the velodrome prior to the start

Happy to see Harwich!

End of day one. Smashed it!

Day two

A late night, a switch to Central European Time and a 6:30am wake-up call (to the tune of Bobby McFerrin’s ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy’, I kid you not) meant that we were pretty bleary-eyed and running on adrenaline.

Grease is the word!

Ready for day two. Note the Holland-themed top!

Getting ready to leave the ferry

Today I found out that Holland is beautiful—the houses are immaculate and the scenery is stunning. The country is completely built for bikes. We must have completed 95% of the 101mi route today on cycle paths! The UK has nothing to compare to this.

Windmills!

After arriving at our hotel in Eindhoven we had a short time to get changed before heading out for an incredible amount of tapas at the lovely restaurant across the road.

I am absolutely knackered and keep dropping my phone as I type this so will have to stop here. Up early tomorrow for breakfast and then we roll out of here at 8am, headed for Spa. Onward!

Training is done…now for the Ride

This past weekend I took part in the London Revolution, a 190-mile two-day cycle sportive around the capital. When I entered this event last year it was at that point the furthest I have ever ridden over two days; this year it is a training session for our epic mission of 900 miles in 9 days which starts this Saturday.

It was great to meet a couple more people who will be part of the Ride 999 team. Phil and James kept me company through the weekend and it was great to get some good miles done with them. The ride itself was great—like last year, the weather was beautiful and the hospitality was very generous. So much food!

At the finish with Phil who accompanied me over the two days

One of the big highlights for me was forming part of a 15-person ‘chain-gang‘ as we entered Chesham and sped along to Latimer. Last year I couldn’t dream of keeping up with all of the fast people that were zooming past me so it was good that this year I could at least hang on at the back. I kept looking at my Garmin and couldn’t believe how much speed we were carrying as we sped along. (I think it looked pretty cool, too!) I can see why this kind of riding is addictive.

I did both days at an average of about 15.9mph which is roughly 2mph faster than last year—it may not sound like much but it made a world of difference. I’ve been hobbling around the office today so I am not sure what state my body will be in by the time I am three or four days in next week.

So my final training stats from the start of January are:

  • Miles ridden: 2,167
  • Rides: 62
  • Climbing: 78,826ft
  • Time: 5d 17h 53m
  • Bouts of pneumonia: 1
  • Nights in hospital: 2

This graph looks good to me and will hopefully look suitably ridiculous by the end of the month:

This week I will be mainly eating. Next week I will try to keep this blog up-to-date with something every day. I can’t guarantee what shape I will be in, especially from the end of day three onwards, but I will try and write something at least slightly comprehensible.

Thanks so much again for all of the support and sponsorship, I really appreciate all the interest and especially the donations and I know that Get Connected do too. I’m up to £3,600 and am hoping that I can push this a little bit further by the time we roll into Milan.

 

 

Back on track, ramping it up

A while ago, I posted that my training goal for Ride 999 in 2015 was to keep ahead of my 2014 distance. I’m happy to say that this is now firmly secured as I have now already ridden more miles since January than I did in the whole of last year:

(You can see the bit where I went on holiday and fell ill in mid-April as the 2015 line goes flat.) Another way of looking at it is by distance ridden by month. You can see how intense the training has been this year since I signed up:

Since being ill on holiday I have tried to quickly get back into it. Last week was my biggest week of riding so far this year (over 160 miles) and although I’m a bit slower and a little wheezy at the top of hills I feel as though it is all coming back quite quickly.
This is the month where everything happens—training rides this weekend and next followed by the London Revolution and then the start of Ride 999. I’m planning to step things up by trying to get a few century rides in before we all set off on 23 May. Based on the 50–60 mile rides I have been doing I am sure I am going to feel it! If all goes to plan I should have done 1,500 miles by the end of the month, including the event itself.

If you would like to sponsor me (and I would love you to!) then please do. I really appreciate all the generous support so far, it has been truly overwhelming. The Get Connected charity is doing great work and with your help they will be able to secure their invaluable services for longer.

A setback

I’ve just come back from a ten-night family holiday on the beautiful island of Mauritius. Before I went I knew I would have to do some work in the gym and possibly even some rides on the island to keep my fitness up and I was looking forward to taking on some bike work in a hot and humid climate. Unfortunately things didn’t quite go to plan.

I started feeling a bit out-of-sorts on the first day and thought I had picked up a cold. Unfortunately this turned into a fever over the next couple of days. I paid a visit to the hotel’s infirmary and was prescribed amoxicillin to try and get rid of what was quickly becoming a bigger problem. Although I had some ups and downs over the next few days, the drugs didn’t seem to be working and I felt as though I wasn’t making any progress. On day six, after spending most of it half-asleep on the beach beneath a towel, freezing in 28C heat, I went back to the doctor and was admitted to hospital with a temperature of 39.5C.

I was so glad to be somewhere where they could do some proper tests and try and fix me—I was exhausted and fed up with taking paracetamol, ibuprofen and amoxicillin. After a brief assessment and a couple of chest x-rays, over the next two days they pumped me full of various antibiotics and other wonderful things. I’m happy to say that whatever they did broke the fever. I then had a course of oral Dettol-style antibiotics to take over the next few days. Then we came home!

Unfortunately the net effect seems to have been that my fitness is almost back to square one at the start of the year. I went for a 50mi ride on Sunday and found it very hard, coughing and spluttering at the top of a couple of big hills and having a real lack of energy. I did my first turbo session tonight and couldn’t believe how hard it was—I am basically working two or three gears lower than I was before I went on holiday.

I visited the doctor today to make sure that I was fit to resume my training. His assessment was that I have had pneumonia (a mild form, I guess?) and that as a result my lung capacity will take some time to come back again. What was already a significant challenge just got a whole lot harder. With just under a month to go until the London Revolution and four weeks until we start Ride 999 it is going to be hard to ramp up the miles. Will have to do what I can!

Come ride with me, let’s ride, let’s ride away…

If you want to join the Ride 999 team on our crazy journey but don’t feel up to the full 900 miles from London to Milan there is now the opportunity to join us as a participant on one of the days. We would love to have you join us!

The route is shown above  and there is also a more detailed PDF (1.6Mb) that you can download from Dropbox or my blog.

To sign up, you need to head to the Get Connected website by 15 April 2015 and register for the particular day you would like to take part. Choose from:

Whether you go for a flat spin through the Netherlands on day two or choose to ascend the Splügen Pass with us on day eight, we’d really love to have you along. You would be raising money for a fantastic charity as well as having the experience and satisfaction of completing part of the route.

We are also still looking for corporate sponsors who may be able to give a little more for sponsorship of a particular day on the ride, complete with branded riding jerseys for all riders and other promotional items—please (please!) contact me if you have any interest in getting involved in this way.

Last but not least, my personal sponsorship page is still open for donations. I am so appreciative for all the support I have had from colleagues, family and friends so far. Thank you so much for recognising what a mammoth effort this will be.

This Corrosion

No, I'm not concerned about my bike getting rusty from all the sweat that has been hitting it over the past couple of months. My issue lies with the 1987 song by The Sisters of Mercy.

I've been trying to do two or three turbo trainer sessions each week to get the miles in. Although these have proved to be a great workout they can be a little bit tedious and I've needed something to take my mind off of just turning the pedals and going nowhere for an hour. As I don't have a fancy trainer with a video screen showing roads and bike races the only way to get by has been to put my headphones on and get immersed into some audio.

On Spotify I found a playlist that someone called Sarah Croucher (thanks Sarah, whoever you are!) has pulled together specifically for Turbo Trainer sessions. It has a whole bunch of dance tracks that seem to be pitched at the right tempo—it's well worth subscribing to if you want something ready-made for your workouts. Not knowing anything about how to use the turbo to best effect and vaguely remembering someone much sportier than me once talking about about 'intervals' I decided on a strategy of listening to the playlist on a random setting and then alternating between hard and harder gears when a new song comes on whilst trying to keep a pedal cadence of about 90rpm. This gives me a chance to stretch myself and then have a relative breather at regular 'intervals'. (Yes, I have since discovered that intervals are to do with heart rate zones—ah well!) So far, so sweaty.

After a few sessions I realised that even though the playlist is pretty large I was hearing the same songs too frequently and so decided to clone it and add a few high-tempo tunes of my own. Help yourself to subscribing to that second Spotify playlist but please, no comments on my personal musical taste!

One of the tunes I added which I thought would be great to spin to is This Corrosion. I've loved it since I saw it on Top of The Pops when I was in Primary School and keep coming back to it. If you've never heard the song, sit back, relax and treat yourself to some 1980s gothic pop perfection:

The problem is that the album version of this song is eleven minutes long. My turbo trainer sessions have therefore now turned into a game of 'when will This Corrosion turn up and will it be at the point where I'm going to the harder gear'? Tonight Spotify decided to treat me to it 45 minutes into my one hour training session right after a short 'easier' song:

A super hard ten minutes at the end there tonight. I didn't quite manage to keep the pace of earlier 'hard' songs but I didn't drop too far below 90rpm and was quite happy with that! Although I've been tempted to skip the song when it has popped up, there's a real sense of satisfaction of getting to the end and not giving up, which I guess is what this crazy charity cycling mission is all about?

 

New brakes please

Up until the start of this year my bike had pretty much all of its original components from when I bought it in mid-2013. When I signed up to Ride 999 it never entered my head that I would need to consider replacing or upgrading various bits and pieces but my conversation with @riderstuart changed all that.

Of the nine days of riding from London to Milan the two that I am both looking forward to and dreading the most in equal measure are days eight and nine—this is where we will go up into the Alps from Splügen (on a continuous 35-mile climb!), stay overnight, and then descend into Italy the next day. I have mainly been spending time thinking about whether I will have the appropriate gears to guarantee that I will get up the mountain. What I hadn't thought about until recently was the descent the other side.

Splugenpass by Sergio Morchon

A little Googling about the Splügenpass revealed this blog entry from an experienced rider who has done it before (emphasis mine):

“I had learned from the web that the downhill into Italy was extremely steep, was it ever. I have never seen anything like it. It scared the living daylights out of me. Just look at the pictures. Signs said SLOW. I rode basically the whole descent all but wearing my brakes out.”

My experience of riding in heavy rain a couple of weeks ago wasn't pleasant. My tired old Avid brake blocks that had been on my bike since day one were really not up to the job; it was quite scary to approach a roundabout at speed, pull the brake levers and just keep going at roughly the same speed! So, I figured that now is a good a time as any to upgrade my brakes.

@riderstuart recommended going for SwissStop GHP IIs which are meant to be good in both the dry and wet. They are not cheap—I bought two pairs with the cartridge and pads for about £45—but it seems to me that brakes isn't an area that you should skimp on in any fast-moving vehicle. Once the pads wear out they can be easily replaced for about £10 a pair.

I've only been on one ride since I fitted them and that was on a fairly flat route in the dry so I can't really vouch for their performance yet. From my limited experience they seem to work well so far and without any of the hideous squeaking that my previous brakes had. I've planned a hilly route for Sunday when a few of the Ride 999-ers will be heading out around the Chilterns and I am looking forward to giving them a proper test.

 

An ‘early-season’ century…from hell

On Sunday morning I intended to ride over to Edlesborough to take part in the CC Luton Reliability Ride, the last of the series of 100km winter sportives in the Chilterns. As has become part of my routine I was watching the long-range weather forecast in hope with my fingers crossed for it to stay above freezing—as I've blogged before, the one thing that will keep me from going out is ice on the road. Unfortunately Saturday was very wet and Saturday night ended up being -2°C which put paid to my plans of going out early.

By 9am things had started to warm up nicely—the frost had disappeared from the cars and the roads looked wet instead of white so I decided to head out. I wanted to make the most of it and not lose out on the fact that I didn't start the reliability ride. Perhaps I could ride even longer than 100km? I decided to load up the route that I followed for my first ever century last year and head out to Silverstone.

The ride out was fantastic. It only took me about 3h30m to get to Silverstone village, 53 miles away and just over halfway on my route. This meant that for the second weekend in a row I had ridden over 50 miles at 16.7mph, a speed that seemed unreachable to me a few months ago. The training is paying off! Feeling very pleased with myself, I had a quick sandwich, some buttered malt loaf and some mini cheddars from the village shop and chatted to a lovely family that were out on their own local ride.

I had expected to see some water sometime after noon and thought I had come prepared for rain, tucking my shower mac into the back pocket of my fleece jersey before I left the house. How wrong I was.

Spots of rain started to appear as I finished my lunch and this made me hurry along. I quickly donned my mac and set out on the return leg. The spots quickly turned to torrents and then the wind came, like a vicious bully, determined to slow me down and make my adventure completely miserable. Words cannot convey how difficult the ride back was—the only thing waterproof on me was my jacket and my Sealskinz socks (I think, although both seemed to suffer defeat in the end) so I soon found that I was saturated in my hat, my bib tights (which ‘wicked’ the water all the way up my legs and onto my tops), my shoes (squelchy!) and worst of all, my gloves. A bit of water isn't too bad but I was saturated within just a few miles and I knew that I had to cover 50 to get back.

The ride back was on a very exposed route and it was (or seemed) rare that I had the shelter of a few buildings or trees to my side. The gusts of wind were either coming straight at me, slowing me to a crawl even on descents, or blowing me sideways towards the gutters or passing cars. It is miserable to be going downhill at 8mph, pedalling just to keep going. At one point, as I was working as hard as I could up a hill towards Dunstable, a car behind me decided that he didn't like me for whatever reason and started honking like a madman. I shouted at his car as loudly as I could but I don't think the sound went much further than the edges of my bike. By the time I reached Dagnall, less than 10 miles from home, my hands had gone beyond freezing and I was alarmed to feel my pulse shaking through the middle fingers of my left hand—I’m not a doctor but I don’t think that is a good sign that all is well. My hands took turns off of the handlebars so that I could flex them into something resembling warmth.

Although the ride back was slow and physically tough with the wind and cold, the biggest challenge for me felt like a mental one. Twice I screamed like a man possessed into the wind as it battered me and more than once I felt like stopping, calling a friend for a lift and giving up. But I didn't.

When I got home my wife had to literally peel my clothes off me as my hands were no longer working properly. I was astonished by the weight of my soaked-through garments—carrying around my fully-saturated gear would have added even more to my journey time.

I had never been so glad to be out of the elements with a cup of tea in my hand. Disappointingly, my average speed had dropped to 14.4mph—you can really see this in the speed graph from Veloviewer below—but I am thinking that those miles home are probably worth more to me in training as they were so tough.

Despite everything, I'm glad to get a century on the board this year and the first half of the ride gave me lots of hope. Of course, I'm going to have to tackle the course again on a day with fine weather to see exactly what time I can do it in!

 

Edgware RC Reliability Ride

Last Sunday I took part in the Edgware RC Reliability Ride, another 100km (63mi) winter sportive in the Chiltern Classics series. Having spent the previous weekend working and having a couple of very difficult turbo sessions I was keen to get out on the road again. I wasn't disappointed.

I've been using the turbo quite a lot recently with a rear tyre that has been on the bike since I bought it in 2013 so I figured it would be a wise investment to replace it before another long ride. I have a feeling that my previous rear tyre started to puncture after a few turbo sessions and it may have been because the rubber became fragile after getting too hot. I have a recently-purchased Schwalbe Sammy Slick 35c on the front so I thought I would try a Continental Cyclocross Speed 35c on the back; I'm sticking with cyclocross tyres for now until it warms up a bit. They have more rolling resistance than road tyres which I figure will be bad for my speed but good for building up my leg muscles.

The ride itself started in much the same way as the Harp Hilly Hundred although it seemed as though there were nowhere near as many riders at registration—riders from the Berkhamsted Cycle Club were noticeably absent given that so many of them had participated in the HHH. I had got there quite early and decided to head out 30 minutes before everyone else, figuring that if I made an early start I would reduce the chances of being the last one back!

The day itself was glorious, starting out cold and a little icy in places but soon warming up to a balmy 6-7°C. The route was also excellent—nowhere near as many hills as the HHH but some fantastic long straights that stretched as far as the eye could see.

I made good progress and had loaded myself up with energy gels and bars which I consumed at a regular pace. On a few occasions I was wondering whether the route had changed from the one I had loaded onto my Garmin as I didn't see any riders behind me. Eventually I was caught by the leaders after 70km as I rode up towards Ivinghoe Beacon which I think was pretty good going. I ended up completing the ride in just over four hours and was pleased to find my average speed over 15mph—I don't remember having ever achieved that over a long ride before so I'm hoping the training is paying off.

The next one I'm taking part in is the CC Luton 100km on 22 February which should be good as we will be on quite a few roads I have never ridden before. Can't wait.

No time to go out

We are coming to the end of a number of projects at work and as a part of this I need to be working for most of the weekend, leaving little time to get out on the bike and train. I’m trying to put out of my head the ‘fact’ I read somewhere that you lose your fitness twice as fast as you gain it. I hope that’s not true. I’m going to try and squeeze as many additional turbo sessions in as I can over the next few days to make up for it; as boring as they are I am so glad I have the option of doing something.

I’m drawing some comfort that Veloviewer is telling me that I have never started a year so well in terms of distance covered on the bike. The graph below is very motivating to me and I’m determined to keep the 2015 line as far ahead of 2014 as possible.

Next weekend I’ll hopefully be taking part in another 100km reliability ride and will be able to get that line on a better trajectory. Can’t wait.