Thanks for an epic day out. Great to have real live controllers too. The "just get on with it" at Hungerford suited the conditions fine. This was not a ride for sympathy, more a ride for moving and survival.
Chelmer Chris and I drove to the start and into ever increasing rain. Still, it wasn't as bad the freezing ride of 2015 - and definitely not as bad as the other Willesden offering, the legendary Beast of the East 2007 although at times, it was a close call and we felt like the "desperadoes".
We started as two but after the half way point picked up a few other hardy souls - Asif, Boa (minus a back light -one provided from the several extra attached to my bike) and Malcolm who's routesheet had disintegrated in the rain. It turned out that while I didn't know Malcolm, I did know his uncle - none other than well known trikie Dave Stokes from trike racing and the Mersey Roads.
Well, it was a ride of surviving from control to control. Eat properly. Warm up. Go back out again. Freeze until you hit a climb. I've never been so grateful for the hill out of Pangbourne or the Lambourn drag. Descending was a different issue. With a rear brake cable not playing nicely, descents were either just full on go for it where it was a straight road and lose speed on the up without braking (I wanted to save them for emergency use as far as possible): on a windy descent, get on the drops and try to control speed so it never required any sudden force. Terrifying.
We opted for a mixture of the dry conditions route and the wet conditions route, choosing lanes over busier alternatives most of the time. This turned out to be fine except for the "road closed" section which we'd been warned about at the start. Having ridden audaxes on and off with Chris for about 16 years, I should know by now that there is no such thing as a closed road..... so we ended up riding through an almost foot deep flood. Nice. At this point I suffered a sense of humour failure as I discovered that waterproof sealskinz aren't and my feet almost instantly froze as water got in but couldn't get out. My decision to go with "waterproof" socks over merino is not a mistake I'll make again
The rest of the route to Winnersh was a muttering affair but after a hot drink and cake at the Sainsbury's, the rain having stopped and knowing it was just a 40km hop back to the finish, spirits rose again. In fact the last couple of hours were the most pleasant and warmest of the entire ride. Feet thawed out and we were warm and our little group of five stuck together. We'd got this far and there was no way we were leaving anyone behind now.
The last descent into Chalfont St Peter was a bit of a hair raiser on the temperamental brake but we made it with a whopping 45mins to spare. Apart from 2015, I've never been so happy to see the finish of this ride. The TLC, bacon sandwiches and coffee felt like the best in the world. Thanks Paul.
I've done many rides longer, hillier and theoretically harder than the WW but I still think that the weather makes this one of the hardest winter rides.
Testing rides though, and the people you share them with, are the ones you remember.
And we'll remember this one way past when the trench foot disappears.
Thanks to Paul and his team for another memorable ride.
Jane