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As all of my riding from May through to July 28th formed part of my training for the Randonnee, I have resumed posting training updates on the home page, and subsequently in the archive section - you'll find the posts in the June and July archives.
The bulk of our little group of South Downs Way Randonneers had decided to go riding on the Monday of this last Bank Holiday weekend, but I was only personally up for a ride on Saturday. So I thought that I'd be riding solo again, until last thing Friday night, Coatsy informed me he was up for a ride on the Saturday, as he would be in Southampton on Monday.
So on Saturday, after a small mishap involving a non-tightened tube on my hydration pack (doh!), I was on my way riding to Shoreham Station to meet Coatsy.
We got to the Downs Link Trail about 11ish, quickly getting to the hill that leads up to Truleigh Hill. I rode up the hill for most of the way, deciding to push eventually, because the ground was so rutted. Past Truleigh Hill, Devils Dyke, and eventually Ditchling Beacon we went, with me taking it very easy once I got to the hill where I crashed on my last ride ; )
It was on the other side of the A27 when a fellow rider (and it turned out, a Randonneer) asked where the nearest train station was - it was probably Lewes, which was a fair few miles away, so we fitted one of my slime filled tubes for him, so he could continue riding - and we could get away quickly to help maintain our average speed (NOTE TO SELF - Take a cheap inner tube on all rides for this purpose, rather than parting with my slime-filled tubes!).
This little stop lost us half a mile an hour on our average speed, which was a bit gutting, but as a long concrete section followed, we'd soon made it up again. The ride to Southease from here went by pretty quickly, and we started our ascent of the hill up from Southease. I remembered this section being largely down hill after the initial hill, but it's not as great as I thought - our average speed was maintained, but not improved, through this section.
A quick, timed stop of about 12 minutes for the shop (we'd both run out of water) at Alfriston, and we were on our way again, improvising as we'd went as we'd never ridden this section of the South Downs Way before. And what a section. Non-relenting uphill was all we had for what seemed like miles. In actual fact it was probably 1.5 miles of horizontal distance max, but it felt like more. We went through a wooded section after riding across the top of the hill, and promptly took the wrong path - the actual South Downs Way curves steeply round to the left at the fork, whereas the more obvious-looking route, which continued in more or less a straight line, was incorrect. We backtracked (thanks to the family with an actual map for their help there!) and found our way back to the turning, and followed the fast-flowing trail down to Jevington.
At this point, you get to a T-junction at the end of the path where it's far from obvious which way to go - thanks to the kind lady in the Old Post Office B & B for her help there (you go right). You basically follow the road down to just past the Hungry Monk pub, and turn left up another unrelenting hill. Fortunately, this is the last hill, and you follow the signs straight ahead, then across a golf course, where the route down to Eastbourne is obvious.
Ride stats weren't the best in the world, but this is the hardest stretch of the South Downs Way, so that is some comfort:
- Distance: 41.04 miles
- Time: 6:20:16 (h:m:s)
- Max Speed: 34.3 mph
- Average Speed: 6.5 mph
Thought it'd be cool to see how many miles I'd ridden to date in training for the South Downs Way Randonnee - so far, since the first training ride, from Eastbourne to Brighton on the 11.3.2007, it's been a total of 281 miles! Just for a laugh I calculated the average speed of all the rides too - this was calculated by adding the average speed from the 11 rides details on this page, and dividing them by 11 - a grand total of 9.8 mph!
Of course, these stats don't include the distances to and from the start of each ride, only the off-road distances.
As it turns out, I wasn't too far off on the ride stats for the Chichester to Southease ride on Saturday, with the actual stats as follows:
- Distance: 46.97 miles
- Time: 6:55:00 (h:m:s)
- Max Speed: 30.3 mph
- Average Speed: 6.8 mph
Determined to best the Chichester to Brighton (and beyond) section of the South Downs Way, I again took the 9:00 train from Shoreham Station to Chichester. A short trip to the local Tesco to stock up on water and Frusli bars, and I was away on the 10 mile ride up to the junction of the South Downs Way with the A286.
Not sure what the ride stats were for this part; I don't bother starting my GPS recording until I get off-road; I just find that it skews the overall stats so much that you can't tell what your off-road performance was - the South Downs Way Randonnee doesn't have any road sections where a paltry average speed can be boosted, giving the rider a false sense of security, after all.
The start of the South Downs Way from here is an uphill section of nearly a mile in horizontal distance, which is not great for the morale so early in the ride. Luckily the South Downs Way does flatten off a bit, allowing the average speed to be boosted accordingly.. after a few miles it was up at 11+ mph. This was using one of my new techniques for energy conservation - allowing myself to roll wherever the terrain allows, as long as the rolling speed is at least 2+ mph above the current average speed. This worked tremendously well at some points, with a rolling speed of 17-18mph, with very little pedalling needed to maintain it. I feel that little touches like this, rather than pedalling like a madman to get a higher average and then running out of steam too early, will be the difference between making the full distance of the Randonnee and not.
By the time I reached Arundel (well, Amberley, strictly speaking), my average was just above 10mph, over a distance of 10mph. Pretty pleased with that. After Amberley though, the large amount of climbing really started to take its' toll on the average. Here the South Downs Way rises to 400ft at Amberley Mount from sea level, on to Rackham Hill which is another 200+ ft of vertical distance (about 615 ft), and then gently rolls up and down to Sullington Hill at 662ft. From here it's a great descent down to the A24, first on Bridleway and then, after a gate and down a concrete section.
From here it's another slug up a long rutted track on the way to Chanctonbury Ring; I have to confess to getting off and pushing for a way up this hill; the mid-day sun was *slightly* strong at this point so I saw this as a chance to stretch the legs.
Chanctonbury Ring is another high-point of the South Downs Way, at 750ft. I used my arrival here to ask some fellow MTBers, who were cycling the whole of the South Downs Way in a day for the heck of it, if I could borrow a 2mm allen key to re-adjust the brake lever reach grub screw of the rear brake, which had slackened off to the point that the rear wasn't biting at all.
After 10 minutes or so, with a fully-functional rear brake, I was off again, using the section going down to sea level at the River Adur as another chance to conserve energy whilst maintaining or bettering the average speed. I pondered filling my hydration pack with water at the drinking water tap on the other side of the bridge at the Adur, but decided against it. There is another tap at the Truleigh Hill Youth Hostel, so I decided to top my water levels up once I reached there, a reward for the nearly 700 vertical feet of climbing needed to get there. I added another 2 litres or so of water to my pack, a welcome addition, had a bar and started on my way again. I decided to stop off at the pub at the Dyke, and had a pint of Coke, to provide some much needed sugar.
A rest and a stretch later, and I started down the road from the Dyke pub to the gate signalling the continuation of the South Downs Way, and promptly got stopped by the now-becoming-ever-more-familiar feel of a flat tyre. I'd pretty much written off the inner tube that I'd bought from Frank on my last ride, as it wasn't slime-filled. Since that ride, I'd bought 3 slime filled innertubes from Halfords, and packed two of them. This time I was prepared and within 20 minutes I had the inner tube changed, a very large nail removed from the tyre, and was enjoying the decent down to the Saddlescombe Farm.
The ride up to the Beacon went relatively quickly, with, admittedly, more pushing, and I rewarded myself again with a £0.99 from the ice cream van, and three 500ml bottles of water at the extortionate price of £1.40 each.. I was slightly concerned that I was running low on both food and water at this point, so another calorie boost was most welcome.
I always enjoy the ride east from the Beacon; even though the gradient gently slopes upwards, it seems really easy to carry a good average speed, and I maintained at least 13-14mph on this section.
It was after turning right (south) on the South Downs Way, then left (east) a little way down, then right (south again), going down the bridleway towards "Bunkershill Plantation", where Coatsy wiped out on one of our previous rides, that I made the error of, after 40 miles of riding in intense heat with only my Microsoft Zune for company, trying to bunnyhop over a small pile of stones / earth. It's all a bit of a blur, but I either took off or landed very badly, resulting in the bike turning a somersault, and myself landing in a stinging nettle bush, after hitting the barbed wire fence at some speed (bending it over to about 25 degrees from the floor), saved from slicing my hand open only by my fairly heavily padded Altura MTB glove.
I've no idea how I got away so unscathed, but I was riding again within a few minutes of brushing myself off, rather worried that it was the adrenalin keeping me going and that I'd go in to shock in a very short time. Luckily, this didn't happen, although I did notice that I'd injured my heel, probably after landing on it with a hyper-extended leg during my crash or something.
My will to go on was slightly wilting at this point - despite the 40+ miles I'd ridden so far, I was still relatively close to the Bear Road start to the Brighton-Lewes-Brighton ride, so it would have been perfectly feasible to cut the ride short and get the train from Brighton station. But I was determined to keep going, deciding to see how I felt at Southease, but getting at least as far as there.
Keeping both wheels firmly on the ground for the remainder of the ride, I rode trouble-free to Southease, finishing with stats that looked somewhat (from memory) like this:
- Distance: 46.97 miles
- Time: 6/7 hours - can't remember (h:m:s)
- Max Speed: 30.1 mph
- Average Speed: 6.8 mph
I was pretty pleased with these stats - this was certainly the hardest 45+ mile section of the South Downs Way that I've completed before, and I knew that had I had enough daylight, I could've pushed for Alfriston, using the mostly downhill section after the top of Beddingham Hill to boost my average speed. However, the crash, combined with the fact that it was 19:20 when I got to the station, with a train due at 19:35, and the fact that my evening was well and truly being eaten in to, made my mind up for me.
I'll take a look at my GPS as soon as I can, just to see how accurate my remembered stats were, and post the actual set of stats alongside the above, just to see whether they were embellished upon or not ; )
At the weekend, Dayna and myself attempted to ride from Chichester to wherever we could get before sundown. The ride started OK, and we rode the 10 miles from Chichester station up to the junction with the South Downs Way problem free, with D's speedo recording our ride stats for the whole journey, and me waiting until we hit the SDW before starting my GPS.
(Slight) disaster struck when, after about 10 miles of SDW, and riding down a hill at about 25 mph, I got a puncture on my rear tyre. This turned out to be 9 punctures, with some of them being 4-5mm slits in the tube - a pain in the arse to fix. Eventually, Frank, a rider who rode past us when we'd been there about 20 minutes, rode back the other way again, and seeing our despair (we kept discovering more punctures!), offered an inner tube. I gratefully accepted, giving him £10 for his troubles - it was all I had on me but was worth a whole lot more by this point!
After two hours, we were finally on our way again, with our average speed having dropped to a pitiful 1.8 mph - doh! We rode problem free the rest of the way to Shoreham, but decided to ride down the side of the Adur and end the ride much earlier than our intended destination - losing 2 hours had kind of screwed us up though. We managed to get the average speed up to 4.2mph, which took a whole lot of riding at 12 mph+ to achieve. So, in the future, I'll be equipped with:
- At least two, slime filled inner tubes
- For the Randonnee, an air-canister pump and three CO2 canisters
- Scabs, i.e. the self-adhesive puncture patches, rather than the standard glue-and-patch
Although this did cheese us off for this ride, to be fair, I haven't had a puncture for at least 18 months of off-roading on the downs and through forests, with D only suffering once.. I suppose this was bound to happen at some point really, just glad it happened in time for me to be really prepared on the Randonnee.
So, to Frank, who lives in Portsmouth, thanks ever so much for the inner tube - it really saved the day - hope you remember the URL of the site and drop by.
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View the Archive of South Downs Way Randonnee posts here
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