The Colours of Clumber

For the first time on 18th October, I managed to convince my wife that she could do a 100km Audax. Of course, I neglected to tell her that it was over distance by 10km, and a further 3km was added by avoiding road closures. Her eventual discovery of this, some 10km from the end was somewhat unwelcome.

Neither of us had the best of preparation, both recovering from head colds and probably about 30 miles between us in the 3 weeks before the event. Nevertheless, with the weather forecast suggesting no rain, we had little excuse but to go and start.

The start of the ride, through Clumber Park is largely downhill, and the English Autumn was doing its best to make the ride as pleasant as possible. The promised colours were much in evidence, and a gentle tailwind made life even more pleasant.

With little experience of longer cycle rides, Linda is not really used to the requirement to refuel en-route, and began to suffer about 5km short of the cafe stop. Bonk rations were brought into play, and disaster averted. The cafe was reached without major mishap.

Of course, what goes down must come up, and the return route to Clowne seemed uphill forever, and the tailwind was now, of course, a headwind. By 70 km I think we were both wanting proceedings to be over (though of course I didn't admit that at the time). A normally quiet B road was turned into a facsimile of Monza on a race weekend by a diversion round an accident, and the last 30km was, frankly, unpleasant.

In the end, we finished with 10 minutes of the time allocation to spare, and with Linda suffering knee problems (which thankfully subsided rapidly). She had 'nearly got off her bike' on a number of occasions towards the end (though strangely she has never actually got off it once yet.....) but put in a fantastic effort to cover 114km on this ride. As a first ride, she should be proud of her achievement, it was not as easy as the route at first suggested.

Having recovered, I've at last started putting in a few miles (not many by past standards) and will be getting serious very soon.

Next stop Cheadle on 9th November for 211km of rural Cheshire. Nice.