Feed stations – Riding from Pasties to Haggis

Dragon Tour – First Multi-Day Event

Over the weekend of 8 – 10 June, in order to prepare for the Deloitte Ride Across Britain, I took part in my first multi-day cycling event – the Dragon Tour organised by Human Race Events which is badged as L’Etape Wales with links to the Tour de France. The event culminated with the Dragon Ride, with distances ranging from 100 to 300 km. I had booked to do the Gran Fondo at 223 km.

The start for the first two days was based just outside Crickhowell which offered the opportunity to do two different rides of under 100 km each in the Brecon Beacons taking in the climbs of Gospel Pass and The Tumble.

I knew what to expect with The Tumble having ridden it twice in the Wales Velothon – basically a steep first half and a relentless grind for the second half once clear of the trees. Gospel Pass was completely new to me, a gradual start and an absolutely horrible ramp up towards a cattle grid in the middle, followed by a reasonable gradient to the top. My sunglasses glasses had completely steamed up by the cattle grid and I had to rely on a race marshall telling me not to stop and keep riding!

The view from the top of Gospel Pass (Day 1)

The view from the top was spectacular even with the low cloud.

Day 2 included The Tumble climb – I managed a Personal Best time, followed by a great traverse of part of the Brecon Beacons plateau. The descent off the plateau was fantastic despite following a lorry that was doing its best to burn out its clutch (it probably stopped me taking too many risks downhill).

Brecon Beacons plateau – not so steep descent!

The last 20 miles were the longest 20 miles I have ridden in a while, constant hills and rolling terrain and being passed by faster cyclists – no peloton this time to draft behind.

The Dragon Ride started from Margam Park, near Port Talbot. Sunday started bright and sunny, no cloud cover of any note unlike the previous days.

The day ended up being very hot which made pacing myself on the long climbs essential – no going for PBs uphill, just getting round was the key thing! The descents off the Bwlch and the Rhigos were fast and great fun and made up for the long slog up.

Celebrating the finish with Didi the Devil from the Tour de France

The view from the top of the Rhigos

Margam Park car park at 0645

In the end, the previous days’ rides took their toll and at the second feed station I decided to drop down to the Medio Fondo – still a ride of 150 km (about 95 miles). My hamstrings were protesting and with the Deloitte Ride Across Britain being my goal there was no point injuring myself with three months to go to the start line in September. I wasn’t alone in changing the route on the day given the high temperature.

I ended up with a ride time of 6 hours 40 minutes (compared to a total elapsed time of 7 hours 12 minutes). Carl (who I rode with on a training ride recently) did the Gran Fondo in 9 hours which meant I’d have probably taken around 11 hours to finish given my average ride pace. Clodagh, who showed all the men up at the Deloitte RAB training ride in April, went round the Gran Fondo in an astonishing elapsed time of 8 hours 37 minutes and won the Strava Queen of the Mountain for the event as fastest female rider over that distance plus was one of the fastest females over the Devil’s Elbow timed climb. I certainly will not be trying to keep up with Clodagh on the Deloitte RAB !

What have I taken away from the Dragon Tour?

The multi-day format was great, particularly if you managed to get to know other riders
Pacing is key; it’s no good going off too fast and not being able to cope on the next day or the third day
Fuelling (eating enough) and keeping hydrated (drinking enough) is important, particularly with the very warm weather we had during the Dragon Ride
Riding in a peloton saves an enormous amount of energy and riders having a bad day are very grateful for a “tow”, even if you end up cycling a bit slower than you could manage
I can cycle the daily distance required on the Deloitte RAB but I can work on my climbing ability (basically more of what I posted about in Gravity)
A daily post ride massage, however short, worked wonders on tired muscles!

Overall the Dragon Tour was fantastic – I couldn’t fault the event organisation, particularly on the Dragon Ride. The race marshalls were plentiful and dealt with the few tacks thrown on the road by disgruntled locals (upset by 5,000 riders visiting south Wales for the weekend, many with families, and spending their money in the area!). The volunteers and staff in the feed stations were awesome, with a special mention for the feed station at Ystradfellte – so friendly and welcoming! I certainly hope to take part in the Dragon Ride next year.

I’m doing the Deloitte RAB in part to raise lots of money for Dementia UK in memory of my father who suffered from dementia. You can help me raise money by sponsoring me at my Virgin Money Giving page here

RAB Training Ride

Last Sunday saw 60 or so participants congregate fairly early in the morning in Princes Risborough, on the edge of the Chilterns, for a training ride organised by Threshold Sports who have the unenviable task of marshalling all the riders from Land’s End to John O’Groats in September. For all of us who attended it was an opportunity to ask questions, meet fellow riders, hear some top tips from previous participants in the Ride Across Britain (or RAB for short) and have a small taste of what is to come.

If you haven’t seen it, here is a video on YouTube showing what the RAB could be like RAB video The video was recorded during the 2016 RAB because the Threshold Chaperones (riders from Threshold Sports who acted as guides out on the ride) told us that it rained for 8 out of 9 days in 2017 ! I really do hope summer lasts until 17 September in the UK this year….

Back to the morning, as expected a lot of the riders had travelled from in and around London – apparently the conductor on the Chiltern Railways train from Marylebone was not particularly happy with 12 bikes and riders on an early morning train from London. At least it was early and not a Saturday when the train can be packed with shoppers heading to Bicester Village! Everyone was friendly although a little apprehensive about what was in store for us during the day.

I thought I had done well travelling from Cardiff (I bumped into Carl who had also come up from Cardiff) but I think the winner for distance travelled must have been Martin who travelled from Wigan. I cheated a bit as I stayed with my Mother in Haddenham – I still cycled the six miles to and from the venue.

The best top tips top tips were:

Pack everything into a big bag with lots of spare space as kits seems to expand
Don’t believe the marketing blurb that your bag is waterproof; use lots of smaller plastic bags
Get organised and have a routine; pack your kit the night before and get the riding gear ready. You don’t want to be the phaffer who keeps their friends waiting or even worse gets turfed out of their tent by the ground-staff packing up the camp site!
Bring ear plugs (plus some gloves and a hat for the Scottish nights)
Ride within your capacity in the first two days to avoid the Medical Tent (the two days up through Cornwall, Devon and Somerset to Bath are “the worst”). By day five the tortoise will catch the hare who could be “in bits and held together by sports tape”
Don’t linger in the feed station pit stops. However, one of our chaperones confessed to a three hour pit stop last year waiting for the rain to stop – it didn’t!
Respect other road users; no more than 10 in a group, be prepared to let car tailbacks pass, obey the Highway Code
Bring a spare rear derailleur hanger for your bike just in case
Keep the training going

We were split into groups of 10 for the rides based on average speed estimates. Carl and I were chatting about going in the “fast medium” group of say 15 mph average rather than the fast 16-18 mph group – there were some fit looking cyclists at the event. A shout went up for two more to join the fast group – Carl and I looked at each other and thought “Sod it” and volunteered. It was the right choice as the route was fairly flat compared to what we are used to in the Vale of Glamorgan and South Wales and keeping up was not a problem (thank goodness).

Simon and Clodagh doing all the work and leading the group

A few hills sorted us out on the first 40 mile loop, particularly Ladder Hill in Wheatley. We dropped one team member who had over-estimated his average speed at the feed station and then the speed notched up to closer 20 mph on the flat stages in the second 20 mile loop. I was quite happy to sit in the group and draft (saving energy). Clodagh, our sole female rider, put all the men to shame by setting the pace at the front with Simon, one of the chaperones, on the first lap and nailing the Queen of the Mountain time on the end of route sprint. It turns out that Clodagh does triathlons where you are not allowed to draft and she wanted the full benefits of the ride as a training session.

After 60 miles we finished the formal part of the ride. A couple of us decided to do an extra “finisher” and do a short lap up Whiteleaf Hill. This is one of the UK’s named 100 Climbs on Strava so on the bucket list of lots of riders. It is only 1.3 km (just under a mile) in length but averages a 9.4% gradient and according to my Garmin GPS unit nearly touched 20% (or 1 in 5 at one point when I was “moving” at 2 kph) – in reality I think it is 16% in places but still seriously steep. I was amazed at the Strava time when I got home (after an extra 6 mile ride trying the beat the rain) to see that I had still set my fastest time on the climb even after 60 miles of riding.

The event finished with some very tasty tomato and vegetable sauce with pasta. If the food at the end and at the feed station is anything to go by we will not be going hungry during the ride in September.

There was lots of checking the ride on Strava (I must update the data plan on my mobile) and swapping telephone numbers and email addresses. I will definitely be catching up with Carl for some training rides from Cardiff. A few others are taking part in the Dragon ride in early June – 223 km round the climbs of South Wales and the Brecon Beacons (three more UK 100 Climbs to tick off) and there was talk of some London based riders coming down to south Wales to take advantage of our “proper” long climbs! All in all, a great event and I was pleasantly surprised how I managed to cope. I just have to keep up the training and be prepared to cycle in wet weather – fingers crossed for an “Indian Summer”. Thanks to Threshold Sports and particularly for our chaperones, Simon and John, for telling us what it is really like on the RAB – bring on September!

As a reminder, I am raising money for Dementia UK, have a read of my About page for my reasons for supporting Dementia UK. If you would like to sponsor me, please visit my Virgin Money Giving page here

Five months to go !

It is slightly scary to think that in exactly five months time I should be in Bath having cycled from Oakhampton during the day. Next weekend I have a training day with other riders taking part the in the event. It will be a great opportunity to meet some of the riders and compare how we are getting on with the training. The day starts at Princes Risborough which is six miles from where my Mother lives which makes it very convenient. It is also her birthday weekend so a good opportunity for a visit. One of the rides near Princes Risborough is Whiteleaf Hill, a climb of about a mile and a half but with an incline in parts of 16% – hopefully the training ride organisers will not be that cruel to take us up it !

Today I took part in the KOM Sportive organised by Lawrence Cronk, my trainer at Enduraprep. It was dry (great) and slightly cool (even better with the amount of climbing we had to do). I chose to do the “short” ride of 98 km which still involved 1,883m of climbing. I couldn’t face the 130 km ride with something like 2,800m of climbing. I was slightly faster than last year even though this years route was longer and involved more hills – hopefully this is a good sign. I’ll be going over the other statistics from the ride later (it’s the geek in me).

The ride started out from Treforest and almost immediately we had a 11% climb through Pontypridd and up towards Llanwonno.

The downhhill into Ferndale was pretty good but not as good as the road from the top pf the Rhigos into Treherbert – fantastic smooth tarmac and a top speed of 67 kph!

The second feed station was reached up what can only be described as a cart track – narrow, stones and rocks in the middle and seriously steep. The worst point was meeting a 4×4 which was coming down the track and I had to stop – getting going and clipping back into the pedals was not fun.

Key question : What to eat at the feed stations !

The last major hill of the day for me was the Church Road climb into Pentyrch, a ride I had done a couple of times before. Rather than turning left at the top which I had done on the previous rides, we had to turn right and continued climbing – not at all what I was expecting. The final incline was a short sharp hill up to the finishing line in the University of South Wales campus – all the riders ended up being in their best climbing gear and seriously out of breath !

All in all a good 4 and a bit hours of cycling so a big thank you to the organisers. I just need to see where I came on the timed climb up the Rhigos. I also have a nice new KOM polka dot buff, although I’m not sure how long it will stay white…

If you would like to sponsor me to help the work of Dementia UK please visit my Virgin Money Giving page here