damerell

Another year, another audax failure, sigh. This was a bit unusual in that the event organiser had the HQ from the Friday evening, so it was possible to crash there beforehand, an offer I accepted.

I had at least 3 hours' sleep and made good time to Pangbourne (mind you, might do the scenic next time, those roads are pretty miserable) where I had a vast pile of food, but still left with half an hour in hand. Progress was slower to the Tutti Pole, partly because I came up behind and chatted to some slower moving riders. There, however, I had no appetite and left half my eggs on toast uneaten. I went badly off route at the Kingsclere info, setting off up the wrong road - not for a long way, but up an enormous hill. By the time I retraced I was pretty much on the time limit and also starting to get the bonk, probably because of not eating properly at Hungerford.

About 5km on I was starting to think of packing, but I ate a malt loaf (I do wish that one of the first symptoms of the bonk, for me, was not being almost unable to recognise that I need to stop and eat something!) and that and a little music from the MP3 player meant I gradually picked up the pace - I was more worried about not having enough time after Winnersh than actually being out of time there. I was sore tempted by the pub by the level crossing in Bramley - which I know perfectly well serves XX Mild - but pressed on after a couple of minutes contemplation, and didn't seriously consider giving up after that.

I arrived at Winnersh with 35 minutes in hand, and left on time, full of lemon cake. From here on it was easy, but south of Maidenhead disaster struck. I took the wrong "L @ Fork" (I suspect by misreading the distance on the cyclecomputer) and emerged somewhere random. I rode into Maidenhead and went to the railway station (which was right there) to try and locate the Station Road on the routesheet, but couldn't; after about 5 minutes, another rider appeared, who I think had been lost for some time. We agreed just to slog straight up to Slough on the A4 and try and pick up the B416.

While doing that we went over Maidenhead Bridge on the A4 and probably should have picked the route up again, but it's easy to say that in hindsight. We emerged from Slough on the A355 intended to cut across east, which we did, encountering the B416 at a T-Junction with signs to Slough and... er, somewhere else. Obviously we wanted not-Slough, right? This was wrong; we were at the southernmost of the two junctions it has with Church Lane, and the B416 goes three ways from a junction just east of there. We ended up back on the A355 at Farnham Royal, retraced to Church Lane, headed North, and then picked up the B416 again with an actual sign to Gerrards Cross.

Somewhere around here the other chap's rear-mounted bottle holder disintegrated, trashing a spoke, just to lose a little more time. I was starting to feel very tired again, and told him he should go on if I fell off the back, not wanting to make him be out of time as well. This happened, and once again I was failing to recognise that I needed to eat (I think the mental model is that you'll lose more time eating than you will by riding slowly - this is basically never true), until I found myself walking uphill - at that point I realised if I was walking anyway I might as well walk and eat shortbread, and try and make it back on the sugar rush.

That was going pretty well - it seemed like I would just about squeeze in in time - but just after passing a sign marked "Gerrards Cross 1", with 15 minutes to go, I got a front puncture. I was considering just pushing on, in the hope it was a slow puncture, but the handling went off very rapidly and so I had to stop, walk to the station, and fix it in a nice warm train. I hope the other guy made it back in time; he should have done, since he was travelling much more quickly than me.