The Rural South 300 - 7th June
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I approached this event with some trepidation, since it was my first
300 - I'd done a 200 in May that had not turned into a deathmarch, and
I'd said to myself I'd have a crack at a 300 when that happened, but
it still seemed optimistic given the "narrowly fails to qualify for
AAA points" on the calendar listing. I also approached it with no
sleep; an 0600 start in Reading meant an 0330 train out of London and
since I work for an American firm that meant starting before my usual
bedtime. I suspect for longer events I'll have to flip my sleep cycle
about completely, or something.

This meant I was almost first to the event HQ (only getting ever so
slightly lost en route), an hour before the off. Having failed to
recover my sanity in that hour, I was away; at the start of an Audax I
always take care to ride with people who are going slightly slower
than I feel like going, because otherwise I suffer later, and I did
that here; mostly, as I recall, riding with two chaps from Willesden
CC one of whom had two bananas in his back pockets - dragging me along
like a donkey after a carrot.

Kingsclere, Highclere, and Micheldever are familiar territory, but
after then I started to get into new ground. The first real temptation
came at the 75k control, which is right next to the Watercress Line -
cycle 228km or look at a preserved steam railway? Insanity prevailed,
I resisted the trains, and trawled off to the control for breakfast -
unfortunately I'm the one auk who won't eat baked beans, so what I
could get out of the selection of fried stuff was a bit limited. I was
pleasantly surprised to have well more than an hour in hand.

I didn't want to waste time early that I might need to struggle back
in later, so I set off alone - the next control was only 32k up the
road, more or less due South to the coast. When I arrived I had nearly
two hours in hand, which was fortunate - with a sea view and gigantic
bacon rolls, this was the control to pick for a little rest.  Even
after sitting around, I had more than an hour in hand when I left,
albeit that I was then last apart from two late starters.

The third stage took me (still solo) over the South Downs, which was a
mix of both long shallow ascents and gruelling steep ones, but I still
had enough life in my legs to get up without too much complaint, and
fortunately the steepest ascent was the final one - getting up
something really steep and then facing something shallow but upwards
always gives me a whack in the morale department. Here, however, an
insidious problem set in - after a few legs between instructions that
took forever because they were entirely uphill, it felt like every leg
between instructions would take forever. Later on I would really
suffer mentally from this.

Once over the Downs, things eased up, but I was getting hungry and low
on water. I saw a bunch of AUK bikes outside a tearoom around 150k,
but I thought since I was behind they might well leave just as I sat
down, and the info at 157k was likely to have a pub by it - if I
stopped there, I could leave as the tearoom crowd caught me up, and
I'd know I was past halfway. Since it turned out to be a posh
gastropub, I just bought orange juice and lemonade and a bag of
crisps, scrounged some tap water, and surreptitiously ate a malt loaf
sitting outside. My timing was perfect; I was just finishing up as the
tearoom people arrived, and after about 90k solo I needed some
company.

We were only 25k from the next control, a weird sort of theme park
built around a farm, but it seemed like further. I also made the
mistake there of only eating a fairy cake and some fig rolls, which
would cost me on the next leg.

The next leg to about 240k had some stiff climbing at the end around
Selborne, so I settled down to a lot of food at the control and a
pint - the sports science types don't recommend it, but when I've got
50k or so to go I find a beer just numbs the sore bits a little, and
it is full of yummy carbohydrates. This meant the people I was riding
with wanted to press on, so I said goodbye and rather expected to
finish solo. I still had an hour in hand after leaving the control,
but since I'd had an hour in hand after leaving every control since
100k, I could tell the time I was spending sitting around was using up
the time I was making up on the road. I could live with that as long
as I didn't start to fall behind, though.

However shortly after leaving the control, I met up with three others
again because one of them had had a puncture - the Spooners and, uh, a
chap whose name I still don't know even though between this event and
the Taste of the Test I've spent about 20 hours in his company
recently. Sorry. This was fortunate because I was quite demoralised
all through the last 100k, and would have slacked off even from the
slow pace we were making without other riders to follow.

Getting to Basingstoke, in particular, was really horrible. There's a
7k instruction on the routesheet followed by an 11k; and both of them
have interminable climbs in. In the dark, of course, you can't see how
far up you've got to go, and without instructions being ticked off
it's hard to have a sense of progress - on both occasions I failed to
check my cyclecomputer's distance reading at the start of the leg.

Simon Spooner had a truly impressive headlight - say rather a 5MW beam
laser - on the front of his bike, but as I discovered this is a mixed
blessing for the other riders; if someone with such a headlight is
directly behind you, you can't see into your own silhouette, which is
conveniently positioned exactly where you are going. My trusty E6 is
perfectly OK, but not with much brighter light sources around that
don't illuminate everything I want to look at. Eventually I decided
about 30' behind him was a good place to be, except in those bits of
the terrain where John and Simon zoomed off ahead and then kindly
waited for us.

Finally, however, we were routed through Old Basing, and then I'm not
sure what happened. I went SO at TL as instructed, first in the group
for a change, rode about 100 yards, and realised the world behind me
was not lit up as if by a starshell. I waited a bit, but with no sign
of the other riders, so I pressed on myself - fortunately the terrain
was now relatively gentle and the end was no further away than my old
11 mile commute. 

There was a complicated jiggle through the backstreets, but
unexpectedly I found myself going backwards up a route I normally take
on Thursday evenings from Bramley down to Basingstoke, and halfway to
Bramley the entire world started to turn bright white again - the
Spooners were behind me, although they'd lost the fourth chap off the
back (which concerned me slightly, since I'd lent him my winter gloves
at the last control).

During the last few legs (which seemed interminable) I dropped back a
bit, but finished five minutes behind the Spooners (about 0110), and
my gloves arrived about five minutes after that. Fortunately the late
starters were still overdue, so we weren't keeping the ride organiser
up by flopping in a heap and eating toast - after about 45 minutes
they did, but by then I was sufficiently fortified to decline a lift
(sorry if I was brusque, I was totally exhausted) and make a break for
home.

Up via Shinfield to Winnersh Triangle seemed best, since from there
the route was familiar, and the A329 is OK for cycling since all the
speed merchants use the A329(M) - I used to commute up it regularly.
Of course the stretch around Reading on the B3270 seemed interminable,
but everything did at this point - and once I was into familiar
territory it wasn't so bad. I still stopped briefly at Winnersh
Triangle to wonder why I was doing this, but the consideration that I
didn't really have any alternatives to cycling home spurred me on.

Every hill was slowing me to a crawl, but eventually my soggy brain
figured out I was hungry; I stopped in Bracknell and ate all my
remaining fig rolls, and was merely slow thereafter. Blacknest Road
from Ascot to Egham is a favourite of mine normally - it's properly
dark and has some nice short descents on it - and when I reached Egham
Hill a sort of grim determination had taken over and pushed me up
it. Perhaps because of the lack of sleep, I was seeing faces and
people in the trees at the side of the road, but there didn't seem to
be much to be done about that.

Fortunately from Egham to Staines is dead flat and very familiar -
it's hard to convince yourself that ten minutes' cycling will take
forever when you've been riding it since boyhood. I struggled into my
parents' place about 0400 and collapsed, and that was that.

So, hm. Most of my usual problems didn't manifest until after 200k -
my right foot was sore but it didn't get appreciably worse, and my
left knee was intermittently sore but the usual approach of gearing up
a little sorted it out - it was agony to walk, though, and I might
have to see the doctor about this one, although even the day after it
felt no different to the right. A smudge of Savlon before the ride
seems to have prevented the usual bottom problems - not that it isn't
sore and marked, but the skin is unbroken. Before the ride I'd fitted
MarSAS foam to the bars, and that seemed to have effected a vast
improvement - my hands were sore afterwards, but with none of the
tingling or numbness that had bothered me even on 100s.

However, the mental state is something else - I was utterly miserable
for most of the last 100k, and in particular talked myself into it by
the conviction that every leg would take forever (and since when is
twenty minutes forever?) I think I'll go back to 200s or AAA-100s and
see how they go for a bit.

Having said that, the total - what with getting out of London and back
in - was 382 km, and for all that the return trip seemed very slow it
must have been at about 20kph, and I was obviously over the 15kph minimum
when I set out from Bermondsey all full of beans (not real beans, they're
horrible). That does suggest a 400 is not outside my grasp.