Well, I rode this event yesterday with Darryl Nolan and we finished within time but it could have been a DNF, at least for me.
We started off badly, as I picked Darryl up at 7am to drive to the Bredbury start. In hindsight, 6:30 would have made more sense as the traffic on the M60 was much worse than I had anticipated. Not to worry, getting to the event start on a Sunday morning should be a doddle.
All went well in daylight, we had a fine lunch at Morrisons in Market Drayton and we enjoyed riding in the sunshine with a light wind, seemingly always in our faces (isn't it always the case). We found the second cafe stop at Gatesheath was shut, an early closure brought on no doubt because of a quiet day. Still, we are in the diary for Sunday, so we're expected then, and I'll ring them beforehand to warn them of likely numbers. We continued to Tarporley Spar and petrol station for coffees and snacks.
That's where things started to go wrong in a big way. Darryl found that his front light didn't work even though it had been fully charged up the night before. After playing with if for some time we gave up on it and we cable-tied my spare Exposure Joystick to his duff light and continued our way.
I can only think that a moment's inattention then caused me to hit a pothole at the side of the road after Lach Dennis, sending me sprawling. After some fine road-side maintenance from Darryl (for which many thanks!) we had taken off the bent derailleur, reduced the chain length to cope with just a single sprocket front and rear and fixed the front wheel puncture (that was my bit), all in the dark, we were able to continue after a considerable delay.
We didn't need my backup plan, which was to abandon. I knew we were only a short distance (less than 4km as it turned out) from Plumley station which has an hourly service to Stockport (5km from where I'd left the car).
On the plus side, Darryl noted that his front light was now working, but only in flashing mode, and he found he'd brought a head torch as a back up after all (but he only found it after we'd done all the road-side maintenance).
That last 30km was quite slow going, with my bent but OK handle bars, my single gear, and a really sore shoulder. It didn't help that by this time the rain had started, which had us cold and wet by the finish.
We finished in a personal worst time of XXXXXX (I'm not allowed to display finish times of course) but we still had 50 minutes in hand, so at least the ride will be validated.
I'm just suffering now from a painful but otherwise still intact (I hope!) shoulder. The bike will need some attention but it will live. I should be able to drive to the event start on Sunday to launch the event then cover the Gatesheath control. It could have been worse.