The Round up

So, now I’m back home and feeling clean and a little bit more rested, here’s a round-up of the trip as a whole (and a few things that I never got round to writing about along the way!)

Miles cycled: 984. According to Tom’s cycle computer. Annoyingly, the battery in mine ran out of the morning of day 9 so I don’t have my exact mileage or average speed across the whole trip, but I think I can safely say that it was a long way

Total time (including all breaks, pitstops etc): 70 hours, 52 minutes

Overall position: 57^th out of 437 who did the full 9 days; 2^nd fastest lady J; if I was being really picky I would point out that the fastest lady was less than an hour ahead of me and that we stopped for longer than that to have a coffee in Inverness. But then again, if I was that competitive, I wouldn’t have been stopping for coffee breaks in the sunshine...

Highlights: The scenery, especially the first few days in Cornwall and Devon and the last couple in Scotland; being part of our Fantastic Four peleton; all the other people we met along the way; the food at the base camps; overtaking lots of men who looked displeased about being overtaken by woemn

Lowlights: That morning riding through Wigan and Preston in the pouring rain; the food at the pitstops (I don’t think I’ll be able to eat another sausage roll for a long time); falling off my bike on day 3 (didn’t mention that previously for fear of causing panic at home...I have some nice grazes all the way down my left leg but no lasting damage)

Flapjacks and bars of dairy milk eaten: Too many to count

Weight lost: None. I’d like to think that’s because I’ve gained so much muscle, but it might also be related to the flapjacks, chocolate and huge dinners

Things learnt: That doing lots of training does pay off – the ride was hard but even though the whole thing was obviously so much longer than anything I’d done before, there was never an individual stage that really daunted me because I knew I’d always done something longer/steeper/tougher in training. Except day 1 which turned out to be the most climbing that I’d ever done in one day but the organisers got the numbers wrong beforehand so we only realised afterwards (and to be honest, it didn’t feel as hard as the legendary Tour of Pembrokeshire (aka The Hardest Ride Ever...although maybe if I did it again now it wouldn’t feel that hard anymore))

Other things learnt: That your body can just keep on going! Earlier in the week James Cracknell (one of the owners of the company that runs the whole event) told an anecdote about one of his old coaches who used to come up with motivational lines such as “if you ask the legs, they never say no”...the implication presumably being that it’s all in your head and whether you actually want to carry on. Anyway, I’m not sure about that, because on this ride I felt like I didn’t even have to ask my legs – after a few days they didn’t know any better and just kept spinning by themselves.