<p>5am on a Sunday and I'm wide awake, in a tent and anticipating some loud music blaring over the camp in about half an hour to wake everyone up for another day's riding...this feels like a strange sort of holiday!</p>
<p>Actually, everything so far has been great. Woke up yesterday to the aforementioned music ("I want to ride my bicycle" by Queen...i think the novelty of that will wear off very quickly). Sorted out my tent then had some breakfast, dropped off my bag, got my bike and lined up with the masses for a 7am start.</p>
<p>The first 35 miles or so were fairly straightforward, I set off with a small group of friends - Victoria, Tom, Alex (all Deloitte-ers that i met through the triathlon club I've been cycling with) - and we quickly passed quite a lot of people. Unfortunately Victoria was having trouble with her chain, which kept coming off and every time we stopped all those people would then overtake us...meaning we'd have to overtake them again once we got going (but overtaking people makes you feel good so doing it twice as often isn't such a bad thing!)</p>
<p>Stopped at the first food stop for a banana and a pack of mini cheddars then set off again. The route was lovely, lots of quiet country roads and nice scenery. It started to get hillier after about 50 miles so we were happy to get to pit stop 2 for lunch by about 12.30 (pork pie, banana, flapjack).</p>
<p>The final section was by far the toughest...continual ups and downs and some steep hills until we crossed into Devon, then about 10 miles of what felt like a steady uphill drag on rough roads that really sap your speed. So we were happy to finally reach Okehampton at 3.45...and even happier to discover that not that many people had finished before us. For a moment i thought that Victoria and I might have been the first female finishers...but then i saw a very athletic looking lady doing some stretching...oh well, must try and contain the competitive instincts!!
Once back in the world's poshest refugee camp I had a massage, courtesy of a group of sports therapy students who are presumably using us as guinea pigs (fine by me..it was brilliant), then showered and sat in a deck chair in the sun reading my book. Then dinner, briefing about today's route and before you know it, it's 9pm on a Saturday and everyone is heading for bed - rock and roll!!
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