I stayed at the Youth Hostel at Jordans. Nice little place, though I utterly failed to sleep (well maybe I got a little bit). There was some kind of large edible doormouse sharing the bike shed with my bike but fortunately s/he didn't eat through my dynamo wiring.
Struggled out of bed at about 5.10am and got to the start about 5.45, unusually efficient for me and I even had time to have a coffee and chat to a few familiar faces. Set off on the mark and was near the front and after about 3 turns the group missed a right turn (I didn't). I seemed to be on my own off the front - I think this would be a first - as I traced the route, which went back to Jordans. I was overtaken by a group of 4-5 who slowly disappeared, and then was riding with a CTC type for a while. He got a bit confused about roundabouts, I told him these weren't the roundabouts we needed to turn at, and he decided the route sheet was "shit".
Since I had GPS, he said he'd follow me, and that's what he did for the next 10 miles.
Meanwhile, garryb was popping in and out of chatting range, so we had a bit of a chat en route and arrived at the first control at the same time. He may not know this, but I nearly rear-ended him as he stopped at a "giveway to oncoming traffic" thingy on the approach to Pangbourne. Fortunately, my brakes do work very well (in the dry anyway). Pangebourne itself was no problem with flooding and the cafe was nice. I spent too long there though so by the time I left, only Mark Brooking and his riding comapion John were behind me. And there was no sign at all of a Larrington.
The next bit was described as "not for the faint hearted" though it was OK I thought, though I wasn't going fast. I had to stop at a nasty public toilet which did at least lighten the load, and I suspected the delay there may well have made me the LR. However it took another stop to ditch 4 bananas which had turned to an unspeakable mess for Mark and John to overtake me. I pressed on and caught them up and then dropped them. I felt a lot quicker without the bananas on the climbs.
The next control, at some place or other whose name I forget, but had a farm shop, I elected to stop and eat. Mark and John had a quick control, so I was last again, but caught them at Fordingbridge, where I was starting to feel a bit unwell (3 12h+ days last week at work is not good preparation, in addition to the lack of sleep the night before). I had some apple pie and ice cream which was lovely - but I couldn't finish it. The coffee was a bit much for me, so Mark finished off the pie and the coffee. He remarked that I could come along again (he also got a bottle of Lucozade sport out of me due to only being able to buy 4-packs of the stuff).
It got so much easier once we turned away from the wind, which was nice. I'm pretty sure I don't want to take a bar bag on PBP, now as I think it costs too much in a headwind, though maybe that's my imagination. I will be relying as much as possible on bag drops.
The three of us rode together as far as the second last control (name also escapes me, it was a Tesco Express). I left them behind for a bit after the last info control - we'd gone to set off and I hadn't realised that John'd had a sidewall failure, which was apparently repaired with the wrapper from an energy gel I'd just eaten. Lips Sealed I waited for a bit once I realised they weren't with me, but didn't want to retrace and it was possible they'd gone past me whilst I had a call of nature, so I pressed on. They caught me up when I stopped for a quick energy bar and then we were off again. They left without waiting for me at the Tesco Express so I was on my own again. The ride to Winnersh was relatively easy through the Candovers which was a very gentle ascent (my second favourite kind behind extremely gentle) and then a bit of swooping. By the time I got to the Winnersh control it was dark and I cycled past the control since the Sainsburys sign seemed to be only visible if you were going in the other direction. I tried to find it on the GPS, and it said the nearest was 6km away (probably out of date) so I asked a human, who said it was back at the traffic lights (about 200 yards back!). It would help a little if the location of the control was described (e.g. "by large traffic lights").
The shop was still open (just) so I risked locking the bike up using my new lightweight (210g) lock and got a sarnie, and bumped into Manotea, who was the control after 10.00pm. Then I went back inside to get some batteries since one of my spare sets wasn't charged, and then I chatted to Manotea for a bit, and then I set off, and then I realised I was freezing (it was raining by now) so I spent a while putting back on leg warmers, base layer etc. So by the time I got properly under way from Winnersh it was 10.30 - 45 minutes after I'd arrived, maybe even 50 including the confusion about the location of the control.
The GPS then helpfully told me I'd not finish til 2am! It then grudgingly revised this to 1am, which seemed a tad unfair since I only had 40km or so to go, and was pedalling at about 23-25kph. Grr. It was now quite hard work navigating because the waypoints had no turn info and the routesheet was impossible to read. I arrived at a village green and the GPS was telling me it was 9km to the next turn but this didn't make any sense as my tracklog appeared to show a right turn here. It may have had something to do with the ridiculous estimate from the GPS as once I took that turn the distance to next turn corrected itself and the time to finish went down by 30 minutes...
I got into Maidenhead and realised I was going past the ARM building (will mean little to most of you I suppose
) and then took a wrong turn as there was a waypoint next to a junction which was SO and then one about 200m on for turn left, and in the dark and rain I mixed them up, but soon realised I was off route, but the GPS map showed the road I was on would take me back to the route, so continued that way. As I pulled up to the junction with the correct road, a car was coming up the hill, and they slowed as I approached the junction, which I thought was odd. Then they stopped just after the turn and I went to pass them, and Manotea said "hello!" out the window.
He'd have missed me if I'd spent about 10s longer thinking about which way to go after going off route. He told me Mark and John were actually behind me - they had gone off-route, and offered me some food which I declined as I wasn't that short of energy. I did have my can of red bull at that point though as I'd heard there were some hills near the end.
It turned out they weren't too bad, though they did slow me down. The main problem was not being able to see a bloody thing. I was very glad of my 1303 as a second light as it made it much easier to make out the road in the wet. I had to keep turning it off for oncoming traffic and being completely dazzled - even if they did bother to dip - and having to slow right down. Eventually, I rolled in at about 12.40, for my slowest 300 by far (and my longest, sez GPS, at 317km, though I know that when I made the tracklog it was 311km, and I didn't take any detours, so I have no idea where those 6km came from).
As far as PBP readiness goes, I am obv too slow right now but the good thing is being back on the bike today to get home felt fine whereas not so long ago the day after a 200k my legs would feel really sluggish.
Today shall mostly be spent doing this: not a lot.
