Dragon Ride Gran Fondo 2012

I had a couple of conversations at work recently that surprised me. One was with a colleague who couldn't understand the point of blogging. Aside from the obvious self-indulgence of the process, and the arrogance of thinking you have something to say that someone wants to read, there is something cathartic about setting out my thoughts in print. Or type. Or something.

But my point was that social media, blogging, all of this stuff fulfils two very valuable functions. First, in our mad frenetic world of "telephone burn and a purposeful gait", it helps us stay in touch. But there is more. For introverts like me it gives me the opportunity to say something without the draining effect of other people interacting physically with me. Don't get me wrong, some of my best friends are people, but, you can be very tiring sometimes, I'm delicate you see.

Which were precisely the thoughts going round my head half way up the long slow drag of a climb towards Cray in the Dragon Ride Gran Fondo last Sunday. I'd been going for quite a while, about 70 miles, 5-6000 feet of climbing already, five hours in the saddle and more to come. The cumulative effects of over 1000 miles on the bike in the last 30 days seemed to be catching up with me, and I was wondering if I was going to make it. I had just passed a sign saying only 100km to go. Which is quite psychologically tough when you have already cycled close on 70 miles.

But there were encouraging signs too. A lot of the people who had gone speeding past me after about 20-30 miles were slowly being reined in, and very few were going past me anymore. Everyone else looked tired, and besides, we were so far away from anywhere, especially the Event Village, that it would take the same 100km mileage to get back by any way you could think of anyway. So this being mining country, it was time to dig deep, grind up the hill and hope for better things.

And sure enough at the top of the hill, in a layby, surrounded by long, orderly queues there was an event feedstation. I had given the first stop a bit of a miss, because it was clearly going to take forever to get anything, and I had enough water to keep me going, as well as only being about 33 miles in. By the time I reached this next stop I was almost out of water, and had no choice but to stop. And the queue turned out to be a boon, for it made me drink my remining water, scoff a couple of bars from my pocket, eat a banana and half a dozen new potatoes from the feedstop as I waited my turn for the water bowser.

It probably took the best part of 25 minutes to get water, but the enforced stop made me eat loads, and this was enough to keep me going for the next 30 miles or so. I also stashed a banana and a few potatoes for the journey, and they were to help me finish with a flourish.

My route should have looked like this. But Charlie had a couple of malfunctions and only recorded about 100 miles worth. Still this link will enable you to click through and see some of the wonderful scenery via the google streetview function. Some of the climbs were wonderful, Black Mountain was my favourite, a long 6-7% climb followed by a wonderful empty ribbon of tarmac, with hairpins and switchbacks to descend on.

Bryn Melyn

The Rhigos and Bwlch are also pretty good, fairly easy climbs and also great fun coming down. The real killer climb was on the 85 mile mark, refered to as the Devil's Elbow (Bryn Melyn), and if you didn't know your ^r*e from your elbow you would call it something else. Wickedly steep and about a mile in length, it had quite a few people walking by the first hairpin. It also had the obligatory photographer capturing the gurning.

Rhigos climb

The last food stop was at the top of the Rhigos, but I chose to copy a few enterprising souls and have a lovely ice-cream from a van in an adjacent layby, as well as pocketed a full-fat coke for later.

Once off the Bwlch there was long descent practically back to the finish, and after a quick comfort stop towards the bottom of the hill, with added full-fat coke and banana being applied to my flagging energy levels, I quickly caught up with the group that had gone past me whilst I was stopped. It's a well-known fact that Cavendish has a banana and full-fat coke before the end of his flat stages, so he can hop onto groups and work his way to the front, for the glory of the finish.

In my dreams! But I did manage a bit of a sprint, before bundling everything into the car and making a sharp getaway to beat the oncoming rain. My official time was a few seconds over 9 hours 19 minutes, cycling time of 8-44, which isn't great, but for 12K feet of climbing and 128 miles isn't bad either. I was 773rd out of 1766 that finished. I'm not sure how many of the 4500 entered the Gran as opposed to the Medio Fondo, but I'm pretty sure it was more than 1766. Unlike many sportives, this one had a timing mat out in the back of beyond to check who did the long route, so I guess a lot of people switched to the short route, or just plain bailed. I wouldn't have blamed them, it was probably the toughest course I have done in one day in the UK.

As Mr Leadman II pointed out to me today, it is also another longest mileage day for me, and one I can't see being broken for a while. Looking at my average heart rate figures I can see a declinng trend over the last week, which is a clear sign of imminent overtraining. So I am going to have a mini break this week and not ride until at least Sunday, and then only over to my parents in Dorset.