Riding a 600kms Audax
Posted: 29 May 2019 22:02
I’m a good boy, really, I’ve just fallen in with the wrong crowd. I used to just pootle about on my bike, then I discovered the love of longer rides, then I became friends with Jon Williams and Andy Wrightson, and together we’ve become the ginger Randonneurs, riding longer and longer rides all over Britain. Last weekend saw the longest ride all of us had done, as us three, together with the faux gingers, Chris Ashford and Rob Wade rode the 605kms Benjamin Allen’s Summer Outing Audax.
Starting at 5am from Bushley Village Hall just outside Tewkesbury, the first 100kms is a fairly fast route out via Symonds Yat to the familiar and excellent cafe at Talybont on Usk. After beans on toast all round, we ventured further into Wales, and the rolling terrain became more and more rolling. A second stop at Llandovery (180kms) is another Audax favourite where cyclists and bikers mix in a cafe not known for haute cuisine, but huge and cheap will do for us. Continuing west through Llandewi Brefi (the only audaxer in the village if you know your Little Britain references!) and through the outskirts of Aberystwyth and onto Machynlleth (310kms). The route then turns east again using rolling valley roads rather than over the mountains thank God. Through Newtown at 350kms, the route then punches you in the guts by taking you on a 500m ascent of the mountain road in the dark before descending for 30kms to the sleep stop in Wigmore village hall (405kms).
Arriving there at 23:45, we had hoped for 4-5 hrs sleep, but have you ever tried to sleep in a room of 50 noisy air beds with industrial levels of farting and snoring. Amazingly, I did get a couple of hours of much needed sleep, and all five of us met for breakfast at around 4am in varying levels of exhaustion, laughing at Andy’s story of kicking the stopper out of his neighbours air bed and seeing it hiss away to nothing accompanied by rampant swearing of the innocent rider desperately trying to get some shut-eye.
As we were leaving just before 5am, we saw Sarah Dowden arriving at the village hall, some 24 hours after starting...we are just so impressed with her determination to finish these rides even though many faster riders simply don’t finish. Great to hear later that after a couple of hours sleep, Sarah finished the full 600 late on Sunday evening. As for us, we toddled back to Monmouth via a huge climb before and after the town, before crossing the Severn Bridge to our last cafe at 550kms. Still together, we time trialled the last 50kms at 35kph as Jon powered away at the front, and we all hung on for grim death, finishing the full ride just after 3pm, some 34hrs after we started, with 23hours of moving time.
So what did we learn?
- Everybody suffers on rides of this length, you have at least 10 episodes where you feel terrible for 20kms, but in contrast, 10 episodes where you feel brilliant, best to treat those two imposters just the same.
- You see an assortment of riders along the way, and you click into a pattern of seeing the same riders at cafes 100kms apart. Why people make these events doubly difficult by riding fixed speed bikes makes me shake my head.
- We met a fantastic girl called Michelle (top class British athlete, who almost represented GB in the Athens Olympics in the marathon) who rode with us for 5 hours, just 10 days after finishing a 2500mile ride to Athens. What an all round athlete she was, leaving us all for dead (except Chris) on the climbs.
- but most importantly, and I know this is incredibly cheesy, when you spend nearly two days with your fellow Beacon riders, it’s simply a huge pleasure to spend it with such great people, looking after each other, encouraging each other in our down episodes - it just makes these f. hard events so much easier, when we ride in a group. Viva les randonneurs.
Starting at 5am from Bushley Village Hall just outside Tewkesbury, the first 100kms is a fairly fast route out via Symonds Yat to the familiar and excellent cafe at Talybont on Usk. After beans on toast all round, we ventured further into Wales, and the rolling terrain became more and more rolling. A second stop at Llandovery (180kms) is another Audax favourite where cyclists and bikers mix in a cafe not known for haute cuisine, but huge and cheap will do for us. Continuing west through Llandewi Brefi (the only audaxer in the village if you know your Little Britain references!) and through the outskirts of Aberystwyth and onto Machynlleth (310kms). The route then turns east again using rolling valley roads rather than over the mountains thank God. Through Newtown at 350kms, the route then punches you in the guts by taking you on a 500m ascent of the mountain road in the dark before descending for 30kms to the sleep stop in Wigmore village hall (405kms).
Arriving there at 23:45, we had hoped for 4-5 hrs sleep, but have you ever tried to sleep in a room of 50 noisy air beds with industrial levels of farting and snoring. Amazingly, I did get a couple of hours of much needed sleep, and all five of us met for breakfast at around 4am in varying levels of exhaustion, laughing at Andy’s story of kicking the stopper out of his neighbours air bed and seeing it hiss away to nothing accompanied by rampant swearing of the innocent rider desperately trying to get some shut-eye.
As we were leaving just before 5am, we saw Sarah Dowden arriving at the village hall, some 24 hours after starting...we are just so impressed with her determination to finish these rides even though many faster riders simply don’t finish. Great to hear later that after a couple of hours sleep, Sarah finished the full 600 late on Sunday evening. As for us, we toddled back to Monmouth via a huge climb before and after the town, before crossing the Severn Bridge to our last cafe at 550kms. Still together, we time trialled the last 50kms at 35kph as Jon powered away at the front, and we all hung on for grim death, finishing the full ride just after 3pm, some 34hrs after we started, with 23hours of moving time.
So what did we learn?
- Everybody suffers on rides of this length, you have at least 10 episodes where you feel terrible for 20kms, but in contrast, 10 episodes where you feel brilliant, best to treat those two imposters just the same.
- You see an assortment of riders along the way, and you click into a pattern of seeing the same riders at cafes 100kms apart. Why people make these events doubly difficult by riding fixed speed bikes makes me shake my head.
- We met a fantastic girl called Michelle (top class British athlete, who almost represented GB in the Athens Olympics in the marathon) who rode with us for 5 hours, just 10 days after finishing a 2500mile ride to Athens. What an all round athlete she was, leaving us all for dead (except Chris) on the climbs.
- but most importantly, and I know this is incredibly cheesy, when you spend nearly two days with your fellow Beacon riders, it’s simply a huge pleasure to spend it with such great people, looking after each other, encouraging each other in our down episodes - it just makes these f. hard events so much easier, when we ride in a group. Viva les randonneurs.