Gently Bentley 200km Audax

 

Chatting on the way to Lasham

The idea of the RRtY award has taken a hit with life getting in the way, but I finally managed to summon up the energy to ride my first audax this year and my first since the Buzzard-Exe back in 2018. I've been struggling with my mojo and my weight for the last few months with my bout of covid and subsequent accident really effecting me. I've been so used to going out on my Sunday 3 hour rides over the last 10 years,  but recently I have been finding it really difficult to  summon the capacity to do them, even though I know that I enjoy it when I'm out. In particular the contact of seeing friends on the bike and just chatting is such a tonic, but the last couple of months have seen a bit of a downturn. Gradually, as the Gently Bentley audax approached I started to feel more excited about doing an event. It had been a long time.

The Gently Bentley 200 is a long standing event run by the excellent Kingston Wheelers audax chapter who run a whole series of audax events including my first ever audax, the Amesbury Amble and with it starting and finishing a mere 2 miles from home it was a bit of a no brainer to get me out. It was also my first ever 200km and I assumed that this would be absolutely fine for me to do on minimal training. Hmmm, didn't quite work out that way, but no one said it would be easy.

A group of six of us would be riding together; four from the Phoenix and two friends and we were all looking for something fairly social rather than pacey. It was great to bump into Nick at the start, who I rode with on the LWL. He's since gone on to ride the TCR and other amazing things and while I was able to do my fair-share of riding on the front back then, he was going to be a good hour or so further up the road this time.

The first part of the ride was quit uneventful, taking us out towards Henley and a few other places that were familiar from my DW days and at this stage the ride was pretty flat. One of our group, Paul, was out on his first long ride since having a new hip about six months ago. He's quite a beast on the bike and he smacked it hard up every hill, leaving the rest of us to chew our stems, metres behind. We controlled in Henley and bought a lovely coffee and vegan roll, before pushing on to the next control at Lasham. I was in full kit as it was quite cold, but I had to strip off my ear warmers and buff when the sun got up, putting them back on again an hour later. It was great to feel the sun on my face, even if it was weak. It was good to be out!

A quick information control at a war memorial at 80kms and then continuing on towards Lasham, with it getting gradually lumpier; those very short and sharp lumps that required the lowest gear and lots of swaying on the pedals and this gradually took it's toll on my undertrained lungs and legs. I had said to Martin, another member of our group that this was apparently quite a flat route; yeah, right! Maybe flat by audax standards, but not by mine.

Feeling tired and still a long way to go.

Lasham was reached at 120kms where we planned to stop for lunch and take a bit of a rest. Unfortunately, the queue for food and service was really long and I just didn't fancy a really long wait before doing the last 80kms. Paul felt the same, so we grabbed some coke, water, Bakewell tarts and crisps and after scoffing a few hundred calories and putting the rest in our pockets, we got going again, leaving the other four to stop for longer. (As it turned out, they had a pretty eventful ride home. Martin somehow destroyed a chainring at Bentley. He bought a train ticket to get home, only to be told that there were no trains running and a bus replacement service was in operation. Oh, and by the way, you can't put your bike on the bus. He ended up making the call of shame and getting a lift home)

Paul did most of the heavy lifting on the way home, although towards the end he was not getting up the hills quite as quickly as before. My legs started to suffer and I was spending more time in the small chainring, trying to stop the lactic acid flooding my legs at every opportunity. I turns out that two hours of Zwift a week isn't enough to prepare you for a 200km ride. Who knew?  

A quick pit stop, still 30kms to go

I stupidly didn't validate the last three control stops, so this ride will not count towards a Super Randonneur award. It was my own fault as I downloaded the GPX from a friend and it was one complete loop instead of the individual legs that I normally break the route into. To be honest, after 150km, I was just glad to be heading home and finishing. Paul peeled off  and I was left to get back to the finish for a quick bowl of pasta and half a cider, before trundling the last two miles back home. 

A meal fit for heroes

It was a great route. I think I will aim to do it again as  a DIY audax in the summer, when hopefully, I will have a lot more fitness. Onwards.

January, you’ve been sh*t

In my last post, the ‘rona had hit and I was hoping that I’d be back on my bike or running quickly. Of course, that absolutely didn’t happen. I’ve always had a weak chest (hence my name on the blog) but exercise has allowed me keep heavy coughs and cold away. After the initial flu like symptoms receded, it then went to my chest in quite a big way and I have spent the last 3 weeks coughing. I took two weeks off completely after Christmas and I started to feel better. Simon and Dale invited me out for a Sunday ride and as  I hadn’t teamed up with them since October I went out, on the proviso that we’d keep it short and not tough. We headed off down to the Milk Churn for their world famous cheese on toast but within 15 minutes I was on the deck. We hit a patch of ice on the back of Boxhill, my front wheel went from underneath me and I ended up sliding 15 metres on my back, almost overtaking Simon who somehow managed to stay upright. Dale was following behind and he managed to stay upright by crashing into the hedge. I dusted myself off and was absolutely fine, and I had barely a scratch. I was extremely lucky and we got back on to gingerly make our way to the coffee stop.

The problem came after the ride, 4 hours later. We’d climbed Leith Hill on the way back and I felt awful at the top, completely over-exerting myself with my heart rate through the roof, on top of a multiple hour ride in temperatures barely above freezing. I ended up basically feeling that bad for the next two weeks, which meant I did no exercise at all, save for my 10 minute ride to and from work each day. It was of course, completely my own fault for not just doing an easy hour on Zwift. It was simply too much too soon, again.

So this week I was feeling a lot better. My coughing had stopped and I put together a little plan to get on Zwift and start getting my power to weight ratio numbers heading in the right direction, so on Monday it was a steady effort on Stage 5 of The Tour de Zwift with a bit of an effort over the last 5 minutes.  Not great, but at least I felt I had both lungs working again and I could start doing some crash training for the 200k audax in February, after having to dns the first one. Finally, I was getting back on track. 

Riding home from work on Tuesday I was on pretty much the last corner before I turn to home. Before I knew it, the front wheel had gone from underneath me and I was down. I’ve come off a bike a fair few times in the last 30 years and usually, like the box hill ride earlier in the month,  I have dusted myself down and other than a few scrapes I’ve been ok. I was going at no more than 10mph but I don’t think I’ve ever hit the ground as hard as I did in this one. It happened so quickly that I was still holding the bars when I hit the road fully on my left hand side, completely winding me. All the air was forced out of my lungs so that for what seemed a stupidly long time but was probably only a few seconds, I couldn’t breathe.  Somehow, I managed not to break anything, I think because I hit the ground so flatly on my side, but my ribs were given a pretty extreme stress test and I’ve got a couple of very sore points on my side and back. I seized up overnight and I couldn’t get my clothes on or move without a lot of whinging and moaning.  Things are still pretty sore and I’m probably looking at another 4 or 5 days off the bike, at least.  I simply can’t breathe deeply without my ribs hurting so even moderate exercise is not going to happen.  

Yes, January has been shit.