The Whole Bryan: Conquering a 600km audax
Whenever you’ve tried and failed to do something like a big ride, and then you try again, there’s always the trepidation that the same will happen again. And, if it doesn’t happen again, then there’s the voyage into the unknown as you move into bits you didn’t manage before. There’s an anxiousness associated with that too. What happens now?
We rolled up as the briefing was about to begin, waved everyone off, had a cup of tea and a chat and then set off about 15 minutes behind, on our own. With no pressure to keep up with anyone we could set our own pace, and we’re all well matched, so staying together was never going to be an issue. Because I was being sick on long rides I’d concluded that it was due to eating too much, or the wrong things, but now I’m convinced that I just wasn’t eating enough, and I was bonking: the sickness was more a side effect. Having power numbers available lets you do the maths: 150W of average effort for 27 hours of riding is 4kWh of energy output, or about 3,400 calories.
I don’t remember much about the night leg in 2018, when I ended up in a B&B in Harlech, but it felt like some of the hardest riding I’d ever done at the time. The climb over Snowdonia was purgatory. In fact, it turns out it’s barely a climb at all in the context of the whole ride – so much so I was convinced we'd gone a different way – and once you’re over that it’s flat and pretty easy for a long, long time.
Almost the first person I saw in the morning was Rachael, and she’d found Justin, who’d rolled in half an hour behind us, and kicked him out of bed. By half past seven the three amigos were fed and back on the road, with just over a third of the ride to do and just over a third of the 40 hours remaining.
The road to Monmouth was a lumpy sting in the tail, but once we were back on the Wye at Monmouth and on the road to Tintern there’d be no more surprises: a selfie at the abbey, a spin up to Chepstow Racecourse and that was that: 38 hours and 18 minutes after our 6am start time we were back at Bulwark Community Centre, and I just have to find time to knock out a 400km before November to get my Super Randonneur badge for a 200km, 300km 400km and 600km completed in an audax year.
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