Sunday 17 February 2008

EF-Dane End-Whitwell-Little Berkhampsted-EF (127.1km)

Today the club went out on a Reliability Ride - the Finsbury Park 100km. We met up at the usual spot and rode up to Potters Bar to start the ride. After signing in and getting our ride numbers, the 'fast' group of about 50 riders left Potters Bar at about 9.20 at a casual pace. There were about 10 Finchley guys on the ride including Werner, Vince, Steve, Andy, Patrice, Kevin, Nick and also the Irish guy who's name I can never remember. Darren was also mixing it up.

After about 5km we came across ice on the road and had to dismount to cross it. 2km further on, without much warning appeared another ice patch on a descent - both the Irish rider and I came down pretty hard. My left knee was scraped and my right hand was bruised from softening the fall. The Irish rider was in about the same shape. After getting my chain back on and re-adjusting my rear caliper I was ready to ride again. almost everyone in the group had not waited for us - just Vince, Werner and a few others had stayed back for us - kudos to them.

The next 20 minutes were spent chasing the pack, the six of us rotating the lead very well. Once we caught them we managed to take a breather for the next hour or so as the sort of casual pace continued. The reason for the easy pace was due to the amount of ice on the road - nasty little patches all over the place, forcing us to slow down then speed up continuously.

On the outskirts of Stevenage at the halfway point of the ride, some of our guys started attacking at the front - pushing the pace harder on the little rollers - eventually the pack split and I managed to stay with the front group of about 10 riders. Werner was on the front and I secretly wanted to tell him to slow down - I was almost at my maximum and just holding the last wheel in the group. Then on a fairly largish climb my body just stopped going hard and I started loosing the pace - riders started overtaking me. I rested up for a minute or so and then latched onto the last riders wheel and dug in, making it to the top with the main group.

On the descent everyone came back together, but the pace was still fairly high. The next climb started straight away - a 3km mofo that gradually steepened from 4% up to 9% for the last 1km. It was on this last steep part that my legs again started failing and I saw a gap opening a couple of riders ahead of me - there was nothing I could do about it. Over the top went me and 2 other riders. We took the descent at a recovery pace and then spent the next 15-minutes chasing a couple of riders ahead of us. 5 minutes later, on a steep but short climb my legs once again gave up and I lost touch with the two other riders - I could see that they'd caught the other two and were now a group of four. I was gutted, but kept the pressure on.

Luckily I caught them again 10 minutes later as they were stopped at a round-a-bout, looking at the course map. Once we knew where we were going we continued on and caught some more riders up ahead - guys that had been dropped off what looked like an exploded main pack. We pressed on together at a milder pace - everyone knew that we weren't going to catch the front guys, so we might as well keep everyone together and work for each other.

The alliance worked quite nicely and we ended up arriving back in Potter's Bar only 2-3 minutes behind the front group. I was nevertheless absolutely knackered and my hurt knee was paining me badly - the blood from the injury had clotted against my leg warmer and hardened - taking it off in the bath later was an interestingly painful experience! The surviving Finchley riders rolled back to Whetstone for a coffee and cake and then our separate ways after.

I think I'm going to have nightmares tonight - screams of ICE! waking me in a cold sweat!

View this ride data at Motionbased

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