OK, lets be clear about something - this was definitely not a race. But I'm including it here as it's a big old event for me, and marks a bit of a turning point in my year where I slow down again.
This had been in the calendar for ages, long before I signed up to any of this road racing malarkey. I've done several 300km+ rides with Phil and Amit, long-time friends and recent audax disciples, but resisted the urge to join them on any of the longer, truly certifiable distances. But this 400km audax started 2km from my house, they were both coming to do it anyway, it looked pretty flat and fast....I was out of excuses basically.
It wouldn't be audax without a very early start, and sure enough the alarm went off at 4.45am. Phil and Amit had been joined by Si and John, two friends of Amit's, and they had all stayed the night in my two bedroom house. Cue a rather chaotic hour as five cyclists try to prepare and eat breakfast, dress, and find the 101 things they need to take with them on a long ride. We made it to Coryton with seconds to spare; fortunately Robyn the audax organiser is as chilled out as they come and not the sort of guy to get uppity at a few latecomers. We signed on and as we rolled out we were joined by another latecomer, Eric, a familiar face from Cardiff Ajax. The next couple of hours took in well-trodden roads for me all the way to Chepstow and over the old Severn Crossing, and six of us riding together and a tailwind made light work of it. As we crossed into England, Eric accelerated into the distance, never to be seen again and would finish several hours ahead of us.
We stopped around the 100km mark in Malmesbury for a spot of coffee and beans on toast. The next 100km was indeed flat and fast but on mostly quiet roads, and we made it to the 200km turning point at a cafe just outside Buckingham just after 3pm. Unfortunately it turned out that just after 3 was a big deal, as the cafe had closed their kitchen at 3 on the dot! We made do with more coffee and cake, and retraced our steps to Bicester in the hope of an early evening meal. A couple of us fancied fish and chips so we sought out the chippy. Well, all I can say is if I lived in Bicester I wouldn't eat fish and chips much - we all universally declared it the worst fish and chips we'd experienced. I forced most of it down, needing the calories, and we went on our way with sun due to set in a couple of hours and 100+ miles still to go....
We pressed on to Malmesbury, now doing turns into what turned out to be a mercifully light headwind. Once the sun went down things got a bit surreal. I had no visible way of keeping track of time, and no idea how quickly we were going, or how many miles we'd done, unless I hit the backlight on my computer. Phil and Amit, the old stagers when it came to riding into and through the night, got us chatting and playing silly word games to pass the time. It did a good job of taking my mind off the yawning and fuzzy tiredness that was starting to kick in. After Malmesbury I knew there would come a point where I'd be back on roads I that recognised, and not long after that see the Severn Bridge. Cross that and it's only 50km home, and ANYONE can ride 50km....
That last 50km flew by as we were back on fast roads and I was able to tick off landmarks that I knew. Sadly things were rudely interrupted in Newport as we caught the aftermath of a car crash that had narrowly missed some other riders on the audax. They were fortunately OK, save for some damaged bikes and looking a bit shocked. The police and bystanders must have been baffled by the appearance of 20 cyclists in Newport at 2am on a Saturday night.
From Newport I could practically touch home, and a good job as it was now gone 3am. Just that last job of diverting up to the finish before heading home to bed. By the time we'd put the hard-working bikes to bed in the garage, had some food and drink I realised 4.45am had come round again and I'd been awake for 24 hours. The ride itself had taken 21 1/2 hours door to door.
Needless to say after that I'll be taking it easy for a bit, in fact that is the plan for most of April as I have another 300km+ ride at the end of the month.
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