Yet Another Cycling Forum
General Category => Audax => Topic started by: Phil W on 12 June, 2016, 09:58:56 am
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From 6am next Friday you'll be able to follow the 55 riders if the inaugural Wild Atlantic Way 2100km audax in Ireland. It has a time limit of 175 hours, 7 days 7 hours and goes from Kinsale to Londonderry up the west coast.
You can see live tracking at
http://live.primaltracking.com/wildatlanticwayaudax/
7 days of viewing pleasure whilst you relax with a beer.
There will be a few audax uk names you recognise.
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I am in :thumbsup: this is going to be one epic audax :demon: cant wait.
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I am in :thumbsup: this is going to be one epic audax :demon: cant wait.
Yes one wild ride, everything all ready and nothing to do till I travel iver on Thursday.
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Anyone else flying to cork on thursday?
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Aye. Due to land 10ish, maybe half past.
I am woefully underprepared and somewhat bricking myself. I have escape routes in Limerick and Galway but am very keen not to use them.
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Bonne route to all. Proper adventure this one and in a truly beautiful place.
I wanted to make it fit into my diary, but you can't ride them all.
Fingers crossed for a general lack of traditional Irish weather.
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I think I used up my weather allowance in 2014, following the Mile Failte. I'll be interested to see the reactions to the climbing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UNtqv5fX3ts
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I'm doing the race the other way, hopefully will get to wave to a few of you, or better still share a coffee at a chance cake stop to swap stories. ;D
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I'm doing the race the other way, hopefully will get to wave to a few of you, or better still share a coffee at a chance cake stop to swap stories. ;D
Yes, hopefully a few happy encounters along the way.
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Looking at the tracker page, something appears to have gone terribly wrong. Peter Turnbull is still on the correct road!
Good luck to all, this will be quite an adventure I am sure!
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Looking at the tracking of Phil W and Mr G (Jonathan Greenway) both are going well. Mr G just on the big climb before the 640k control , Phil W about 40k behind,
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Wish I could have done this one - Bon Route to all!!! Just didn't fit in with m ride this season :-(
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First finisher!
(https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/13495155_1251248568233462_2881442661914383219_n.jpg?oh=64278e7abf20941ba7fa9a246b471138&oe=57FC5A31)
Most riders seem to be moving along quite nicely. Many of the photos this week have shown some dampness, but no reports of anything really heavy. Hopefully the weather has been kind to them. Peter Marshall featured in this video I think:
https://www.facebook.com/nigel.collins.906/videos/10206143072970360/
Postie and George appear to have ridden together quite a chunk of the event.
Photo on the ride's Facebook of Phil W just now, checking into the penultimate control at 1800km, looking a little battered (understandably!) but smiling (maybe a bit of neck trouble going on there? Fingers crossed he holds it all together.).
(https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/13502127_1870728016481732_8176603153539868639_n.jpg?oh=1cdf70a019c4a2f3e56087e2b1cc4ad9&oe=57F23EB0)
Jsabine appears to be in Donegal but still moving along towards the back end of the field. Possibly riding with Paul Markey, who it sounds like has had a bit of a chute.
I am not sure what the cut off time is, tomorrow morning I guess. So, hopefully, all those who have now made it to that penultimate control have around 24 hours for around 300km, so a good chance for a bit of kip and a final push.
Allez Allez Allez.
Edit - Paul Markey has had a spill, some stitches in his head and couple of busted ribs from his Twitter. Definitely looks like him and John Sabine are together and setting themselves a tough target to finish by cut-off time by the looks of it, but they're plugging away, so more power to them.
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Postie and George have finished!
Phil's neck has given in - looks like they are rustling up a support and I hope he can make it.
(https://scontent-lhr3-1.xx.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/13528858_10209564987071341_3303225954684425733_n.jpg?oh=3673cca6ff2b1662aadd4c915adc89b2&oe=57C2F7FF)
Jsabine appears to still be plodding on at the rear of the field. Hard to gauge distance to go, but they look to be up against it for cut off. But, hopefully, they will reach the end and they may have a little extra time due to the hospital trip for Paul Markey. Keep on pedalling.
Peter T appears to have been doing the Peter T thing and may have added a 60km wrong turn onto his ride!
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From 6am next Friday you'll be able to follow the 55 riders if the inaugural Wild Atlantic Way 2100km audax in Ireland. It has a time limit of 175 hours, 7 days 7 hours and goes from Kinsale to Londonderry up the west coast.
You can see live tracking at
http://live.primaltracking.com/wildatlanticwayaudax/
7 days of viewing pleasure whilst you relax with a beer.
There will be a few audax uk names you recognise.
So it's a 1pm cutoff today (Fri) ?
Apart from MarkI Eyeball, can I tell how far riders have left to ride?
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^I think that's all you've got to judge it yes.
Sadly, looks like Phil cut out the last loop up the coast to Malin Head, presumably due to neck issues.
Still a good chunk of riders on the road. I think a few will miss the cut-off looking at it, but all credit to them to just keeping it going and getting it done.
As a very rough Google Map estimate, it looks to be around 220km from Gortahork (where the Elliptigo is), 190km from Carrickart (where jsabine is).
Those who are past Malin Head appear to have a good chance of making it before the cut-off (65km)
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I'ts a great pity that Phil might not be credited with the ride, but I have every sympathy with him, the reason i moved over to recumbent bikes, trikes and velomobile was because of damage and subsequent agony in my neck holding my head up after a mountain bike accident.
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^I think that's all you've got to judge it yes.
Sadly, looks like Phil cut out the last loop up the coast to Malin Head, presumably due to neck issues.
Still a good chunk of riders on the road. I think a few will miss the cut-off looking at it, but all credit to them to just keeping it going and getting it done.
As a very rough Google Map estimate, it looks to be around 220km from Gortahork (where the Elliptigo is), 190km from Carrickart (where jsabine is).
Those who are past Malin Head appear to have a good chance of making it before the cut-off (65km)
Looks like Birgitt is bang-on the bubble! With David Coupe just a few clicks behind, and quite a big gap back to the next few.
that's my lunch-hour planned.
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https://www.facebook.com/david.finnigan.39/videos/10209569068693379/
Phil with his neck brace - at least he has a sense of humour about it!
Looks like he managed about 30km on the route after being braced up and then chose to miss out the final headland.
Great shame, but I am sure he's enjoyed the adventure and will have some tales from the road.
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Smashed it. 300kms a day. Off the road by 10 every night.on the road by 6 each morning.6hours plus sleep each night and a lot of pubs visted and ale drank.
Bloody great ride.
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Living proof that the "bike 'n beer" method really works !!! :thumbsup:
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:thumbsup:
Nicely done Postie!
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Still a good chunk of riders on the road. I think a few will miss the cut-off looking at it, but all credit to them to just keeping it going and getting it done.
If I'm reading this right, I can see 15 riders still out there, way out of time. That is a LOT for this field size (did 53 start?)
Perhaps beer sales had a big blip down the west coast this week ...
(or a lumpy 2100 is actually quite a hard thing!)
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Any news of jsabine?
Looks like he was last tracked up near Malin head around midnight. Hopefully that means he will have finished in the wee hours, out of time but finished none the less.
Massive chapeau to all. Should the event happen again, I would like to ride it for sure. It is also on the list of solo tours, and maybe sections as tandem tours!
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Aye, the tracker finally broke with me having completed my Irish end to end ... Finished in time for breakfast.
As noted, rode quite a bit with Paul851 OTP following his off'n'stitches, before discretion proved the better part of valour and I saw him with bus ticket in hand.
2100 slightly lumpy km. Yes, it's hard (Scenic? Ireland? Who'd 'a thought it?), especially combined with weather - it got a little damp at times, and not every headwind was rewarded with an equal and opposite tailwind.
The route is great, and would make a fantastically rewarding photographic and scenic tour over what, about six weeks?
Organisation - really well thought through for the suggested speedy(ish) 300km/day timetable, and Eamon did a sterling job keeping it going while also running International Rescue - I wasn't the only person to have him turn up with a complete spare bike (Forks. Pah!).
I hurt surprisingly little, though no doubt that will come, but I'm probably too tired to be going to a birthday party on Galway tonight.
Anyway, time limits? We sneer at 'em - s'only a bike ride, innit. And while I can't pretend to have enjoyed *every* minute of it, the Men in Black have very little work to do.
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Well done John!
You are right, it is only a bike ride and the homolywhatsit is less important than having an adventure and enjoying yourself (most of the time).
Well ridden and chapeau for getting it done; in or out of time doesn't really matter much.
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An interesting ride. The lower time limit is what makes it possible to put on an event like this. When a control closes, it frees up the volunteers to move up the course. The presence of headland and island legs means that out-of-time rides can short-cut the course and stay within the control opening times. That's similar to the way a 24 Hour TT works. A 'Wild Atlantic Week' would be a good idea, and is what we've seen here in a 'de-facto' sense. With some riders doing the full course, within the minimum speeds, and others missing sections.
I'm still in favour of RM validation only for those who meet the minimum speed, but just starting this ride deserves a medal.
I'll be watching Top Gear tomorrow, as they're doing a piece on the Ring of Kerry, and the Dingle Peninsula, which were the best bit to film on the Mile Failte in 2014, so an interesting comparison. I've got the WAW on the to-do list, but in a car, or on a motorbike.
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The only time I visited Ireland was when my wife and I walked the 135 mile Kerry Way. Beautiful scenery. Wouldn't mind cycling some of that wonderful country.
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Wednesday night I shifted to chain into the spokes on the last climb. Two things happened, the chain broke and two spokes bent. The chain I fixed immediately. The spoke issue not noticed immediately translated into a shimmy on the descent with the wheel eventually buckled into the frame. I got my toolkit out but the spoke key was missing. So I rang the control to see if they could get a spoke key to me. I slept on a patch of grass wrapped in my silver blanket, with my thermal top over my head to keep the midges off. It took just over 1.5 hours before Dave turned up with a spoke key. 5 mins later I'd trued the wheel and was on my way. This did mean I was late arriving in Lackenhaugh Control
After Lackenhaugh the neck issues appeared, initially as a burning sensation like bad sunburn. I rigged up an inner tube zip tied to my saddlebag which stretched from behind over my forehead. The only way I could manage the descents at any speed and see where I was going was to sit on the top tube with my right leg against the tube to stop any shimmy. For flat and uphills I'd lowered the saddle to raise my line of sight so I could see down the road. This worked for a while and got me a further 148km to Letterkenny. By then it was failing and I was staring straight down again. This is where the ropes, industrial zip ties and helmet harness system was applied. This was in a pizza place where I'd told the staff I was awaiting a couple of friends to help me with a problem. It was quite surreal as the system was rigged up, who knows what the pizza people thought. I felt like I was Frackensteins monster or a mummy or something.
This got me further down the road but i had restricted movement unable to get water bottles whilst riding. I had to stop to drink. I also could not really turn my head. Eventually this setup began to loosen, my neck began to drop as an increasingly sharp angle , the pain increased. Staring straight down at the road with just my front wheel and the road markings visible I had too very close encounters with road furniture. I decided the setup wasn't safe and no ride was worth a trauma unit. Eamon came out and tried to retighten the setup. This just put me in agonising pain with no improvement in forward vision.
In the interests of safety and the long term health of my neck, we made the call to the stop the ride. There had been tears earlier in the day as I fought on against the neck issues. This time there were none, I was content I'd done everything reasonably possible to keep going as far as I did, and that there was nothing more to do. There was now no pushback from Eamon to keep riding, we both knew the very likely and serious outcome of that course.
36 hours later cycling across Dublin to the ferry my neck once more dropped. At the time I stopped I could have spared about 4 hours sleep and still had time for the remaining km within the time limits. Dublin confirmed that that option would have done nothing other than to frustrate me.
There were many twists and turns in this ride over 7 days. I've thoroughly enjoyed this wild adventure in a thousand different ways. I'll be putting together my thoughts and impressions of this event into an article for Arrivee. So that's all for now.
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Good write-up, Phil. I feel for you. My neck muscles went on the last morning of the Mille Cymru, and I used a fist to keep my chin up. I did a 200 diy today for rrty and resisted the urge a lot to get aero (stomach permitting) on the decents.
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Still not managed to sort this ride out in my head yet but pretty sure crashing didn't help my cause any ,fortunately I didn't bring Birgitt down when our wheels touched as I'm not sure I could have lived with ruining someone else's ride . Big thanks to jsabine for the bed in Donegal (I reeeeeeally needed that 3 hours kip) and for the company and also for pointing out that I was getting pretty iffy on the road , I knew it was all over but didn't want to admit it :( I did enjoy the ride though and if they run it again in 2020 I for one will definitely be signing up.
Paul
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I knew it was all over but didn't want to admit it
I'd been very, very carefully avoiding asking that question for quite a long time, because I didn't think either of us wanted to deal with an honest answer ... or worse, with a dishonest one ...
Thanks too for your company over such a period - it helped to keep me going - and a huge chapeau for your determination in continuing after your off.
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I asked myself if I would end up making the same film as the Mile Failte if I followed the WAW. I concluded that I probably would, but end up even more knackered. It was a lot better to leave it to a fresh pair of eyes. But it does sound like the Mile Failte footage could be of use in telling the WAW story, like this sequence about Paul.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJ5Nh41Xrjs
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This was an incredible event--off the scale in terms of scenery and very well organised. The full shaggy dog story will emerge in due course. In the meantime, here are a few items of kit that worked particularly well for me.
Gore-Tex Active bike jacket (the new one with 'permanent beading surface'): windproof, lightweight, extremely breathable, and shrugged off everything that the Irish weather could throw at it, including a ride out to Loop Head that was like being pressure-washed on the bike.
Morgan Blue Solid chamois cream: I road-tested several arse creams before settling on this one. It's advertised as being for wet rides (as if it would rain in Ireland…) but is fine even if the sun shines. I found a single application good for a 300k day, and suffered no significant chafing in 2100k. Although this might be partly down to…
Assos Skin Repair Gel: A panic buy the day before I set off. This is stupidly expensive but seems very effective. An overnight application soothed any sore bits of the bearing surfaces.
Tubeless tyres: Hutchinson Sector 28, with Stan's Race Sealant, inflated to about 70 psi. These gave a comfy ride on Ireland's lunar road surfaces and needed no attention during the ride. They're an easy fit on Hunt rims.