I enjoyed that, thank you Graeme & Co.! Although definitely type-2 fun for a good deal of it due to complete lack of any cycling further than the shops recently, plus Christmas.
The 75km ECE straight into that wind, and no riding for six weeks previous, I struggled to get to the start — absolutely no power in the legs! I usually ride the first 100km fasted, but today I popped the seal at about 70km, I was feeling it that bad. Although there were still riders at the start, by the time I had got my brevet and refilled my bottles, I was last away.
The headwind had become a tailwind and I caught and passed The Straggler, who was clearly having a bad day, and caught the main ACME peloton-splinter at the first control — AndyC33, Carlosfandango, Huggy, Bikeabilityman, Jan, probably other ACMEs, and a couple of waifs and strays, including one first-timer who didn't have the routesheet and so was being led, but wasn't very quick either
Lots of steady riding with Andy, as we were both on fixed, followed by standing around waiting for the less-steady-riding others to catch up at the tops of hills.
Tippers caught us just before the next control, having spent a couple of hours stamping brevets at the first control, and, rather than stand around in the cold drinking milkshake, decided to push on to keep warm, so after a frantic chase for a kilometre or so, I hung onto his wheel — he's not slow, and punches a nice big hole in the air, so I took full advantage and rode for a while slightly above my usual pace, instead of well below it.
The oyster in Mersea was ... different, which I guess was a nice variation on the ubiquitous garage forecourt. The ladies were chatty and seemed to be enjoying the constant passage of
nutters cyclists, but, more importantly, knew how to make a macchiato
I rode with Tippers until we were just a couple of kms from the first info, but my legs were starting to give worrying signs of blowing up, so I eased off and let him go. After that control, I stuck to the back wheel of a Maldon group, who were taking it easy. Not a lot of chatting, due to the windy nature of the main road we were on, and steady stream of cars. We hit a small incline and the inevitable happened: they all started clicking down the gears trying to find a position of constant power, but that was dropping me off my gear, so I did what fixers do and rode off the front. Clearly my legs weren't doing too badly after all.
At the second info I passed Tomsk and JiberJaber just leaving, as well as Denice and James — I made a quick note of the answer and caught up with Denice and James, and rode with — as it turned out James is one of my local riders in Cambridge. We avoided the (probably) muddy canal towpath and diverted onto the main road, navigating by map-on-GPS, nearly making several false turns before rejoining the route. Shortly after, the road started to go up and my legs gave a wheeze and stopped working. I gurned up the long (-ish), huge (not) climb to Gt Braxted on my own, being passed a few times, urgh! But height-gained meant a downhill all the way to the finish, and that couldn't've come soon enough.
Hung around in arrivée chatting for a couple of hours before heading out to ride 70-odd km home. At least now I should have a tailwind!
Rode with Tomsk for the first 10 until our routes diverged and then it was a long, steady climb all the way back up to Castle Camps and a fast downhill to the Cambridgeshire plain for a flat run home. The uphill bits made a significant hole in my averages, with still not much power, but once I hit the flat, I was rolling steady at high-20s, making it home by about 9pm — 260km in 14h44, with a couple of hours to spare.
That's my January RRTY done. Time to start on a programme of lots of short, punchy, high-cadence training rides and get my fitness back up, methinks!
