Andy and I did "Making Hay" 200 km on the tandem yesterday. It was very much a tale of 2 halves.
First off, the last 2 rides I have done have ending in me packing. An reasonably fast attempt at the Cheltenham Flyer 3 weeks ago resulted in a partial ligament tear at 150 km, which forced a bail. After 2 weeks rest we attempted a York arrow from Cardiff last week. Suffice to say, for various reasons, we bailed on that too. So this ride became a little bit of trying to get back on the horse for a finish.
The ride out to Hay-on-Wye was really quite pleasant. We had some navigational issues in Newport which put us at the back of the field, but we made up time at the first control in Usk at 40 km. The ride continued through the Black Mountains up to Cwmdu, where we managed to arrive suitably early in the field to have 'quick' service (in relative terms). We pootled further up the climb and had a fast descent to Talgarth (76 km/h). It started to rain, but only a little bit. We reached Hay-on-Wye (97 km) before midday, in a very respectable time of 4h 45 min. 'Ah ha,' thought I, 'we might make it round in just over 10 hours.' Stupid, stupid, stupid.
As we turned in Hay, we turned into a headwind. It then started to really rain. Not good. The next 50 km section turned into a slog into the wind, seemingly mostly uphill. After about 50 minutes, we were completely soaked. I could feel the water sloshing about in my SealSkinz socks. There we several sets of dodgy roadworks here, so I had a slightly uncomfortable ride on the back of the tandem. We eventually crawled into Mitchell Troy (near Monmouth) at 2.45pm. All the cyclists already there looked as we felt, some of the ones arriving after us looked a little worse.
Andy & I took the decision to deviate slightly from the route back to Newport via Usk, rather than risk the twisty lanes in the wet. I actually found this section better than the last, but still very very wet and very windy. We finally arrived back to Tongwynlais in a total of 12 hours, under 5 for the first half, over 7 for the second. No one at the finish reported an easy ride, but I was pleased that I had finished, albeit with some slight pain in the knees.
Jasmine
