Today was brutally hard. It started so easily, 50km of beautiful tail winds, bagging tiles, really enjoying myself... Then the off road happened.
In total I had 10km of crazy off road shit. It started with a 1.4km hike a bike through chest high vegetation on a path that clearly hadn't been used for a while... At the end of which, the water level had over topped the path, and if there was any hope left of dry feet, it disappeared at this point. Tho I was already soaked upto about waist level from the wet vegetation.
Then began the next 4.3km of slow laborious off road. The "path" was off camber to one side, and made of grass and mud. My GP5K tyres are not really suited to this terrain, which made it even harder than it needed to be. This really made my arms hurt from the amount of effort needed on the handlebars just to keep from falling. I lost the rear end a few times. And if My drive train wasn't dirty enough already... it acquired it's self a shrubbery...
After this sector I mercifully got some tarmac, which was heavenly. Then I got to the next off road section. This was 4.3km in length, and started off relatively rideable. But by the final km or so, I had the mother of all bonks, and it became a trial just to keep going. I ended up getting off and pushing. When I eventually got to the end of that sector, I had planned to find some dry ground, sit down, and have something to eat. Exiting the woods, the rain started. So that plan went out the window. I donned a waterproof, and headed to about 1km to where I knew there was a bus shelter, and sat out of the rain, and had a handful of M&Ms.
I was pretty messed up at this point. I had a drink. I had some food, but I was also getting cold, so only one thing for it, Get on the bike. I decided to not try my luck with the next off road section, tho it looked from the bit I could see, like it may have a reasonable surface. I'll come back for that.
At the 70km mark, I called a friend. "I'm fucked. Help". She spent the next hour and a half, talking to me, and guiding me through, as we modified my route on the fly to just get me to a station, as easily as possible. I am very grateful of this, it really helped. I had to stop a few more times to top up the M&M inputs. I realised around this point that I was starting to dehydrate. I had started with 1L of water, and with 20km to go, was down to my last emergency mouthful. Not good. Fortunately at the 90km mark I found a water tap, for which I was exceedingly grateful. This, and a few more M&M's was enough to get me to the finish. After crossing the Rijn-Kanaal, I just took the most direct route to the station, avoiding any faff for tiles. Just needing to get home.
In the end the ride was 100.6km in length, with 10km of it offroad.
Bagged 30 new tiles, increased my cluster by 54. And I now have 8 overlapping 24x24 squares. And... I learned a lot.
Fortunately there aren't many tiles left that require off roading. So hopefully I won't have to go through this again.
Hopefully.
And the ride on strava if you're curious.
https://www.strava.com/activities/5341000184J