Earlier this year Audaxes have been failures - from the heroic
(bonk/total despair at 170km) to the laughable (DNS - alarm
clock). Hence it was with some trepidation that Naath and I set
out on this one on Saturday. We'd come up 35-odd miles to Reading
the night before, failed to completely stuff ourselves with pasta
(a mistake), and trundled up to the start.

Not many entries - 14 or so with about the same for the 200km, and
half of each field DNS thanks to the weather (I saw Dave
Larrington of this parish down for the 200 as a non-starter - hope
it wasn't anything more serious). Hence we were riding alone for
almost the entire ride. Intermittently wet on the outward leg with
one of those annoying headwinds - very stiff in the last five
miles or so - which disappears as soon as you turn around. I
started to feel the bonk at about 12 miles - inexplicably, since
I'd hogged a big bowl of porridge and a banana that morning - but
this time I did the sensible thing; stopped and devoured a whole
packet of fig newtons, and soon felt much better.

The return leg was quite dry, but just outside Pangbourne we
discovered the chainring bolts on the stoker's sync chainring were
loosening. To be precise, we discovered this when the sync chain
fell off because only one of the chainring bolts was left.
Fortunately we could coast down to the town where there's a bike
shop, but a) must remember to do them up tighter than tight b)
must remember to add cable ties to my spares kit - they could
easily have held it on for the rest of the ride.

Even with this little drama we made it back with about 40 minutes
to spare, but this was at the BP 12.5 km/h minimum. Then on the
way home it rained explosively, but such is life. Nice ride; shame
about the weather.

However, I did get rather chafed between the, er, cheeks for some
reason. The lesson there is that Ibuprofen gel really means it
about not on broken skin. It takes about 15 seconds to start to
hurt, so I just had time to say "Just do a little patch, dear, in
case I suddenly have to say AAARGH JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!"