The complete opposite to last year when it was cold and emptying down, this one was bright sunshine all the way with light winds until we got up onto the high moors.
The course was superb and much improved too - but also much, much harder with a load of extra hills at the start, a couple of added incursions onto the lower slopes of the moor before the main drag up to Princetown but worst of all - 3 or 4 long 20% hills right near the end when you were pretty much broken from what had gone before.
1300 riders - I started with Brian Nolan in the second group of 100 and we were soon in cycling heaven - narrow dusty lanes climbing through picturesque reservoirs with mad technical descents. This is Brian's home patch and he was clearly a little excited, sitting in with some fast-starting racer types and disappearing up the road over a few of the early hills - I sat in the wheels for at least 90 minutes cos I feared the worst. Sure enough the hills kept coming the temperatures started rising and the groups up ahead started coming back. I went past the remnants of Brian's group which had split into pairs and solos and when a handy looking pack of local racers stormed through the time had come to see some action.
You've got to make sure this works out or you'll get into trouble by following wheels which are too quick but I felt reasonable, and was holding my own on the slopes preceding the 40 mile checkpoint at Oakhampton. On the run in to the feed we were averaging 29 mph with two superb 2nd cats from Exmoor's CycleSport Dynamo club doing most of the work in a group of about 20 of us. They rolled over the timing map at the control but didn't stop for a feed so I thought why not? There was 30 miles of not too hilly terrain between there and the control on top of the huge climb up to Princetown on Dartmoor so I figured I felt strong enough to stay with them for most of it. Risky but it paid off, despite an absolute hammering in the first few miles each hill saw the strong guys gradually weaken and I had good enough legs to stay in there despite ridiculous speed for a 100 mile hilly ride in an inferno.
The group inevitably splintered on the lower slopes of the moors and it was absolute torture. The road up to Princetown is one of those varying gradient roads with huge long straights where you can see miles up into the heavens. The tiny specs of colour standing out against the green moorland were the jerseys of riders miles up ahead on the climb. It's very exposed, the wind had gotten up and it felt like you were riding with a giant hair-dryer blowing into your face.
The feed at the top had been swelled by riders from the shorter route who had rejoined the course at the same point and there were some clearly close to suffering heat exhaustion - sitting in the shade of buildings and soaking their shirts under the barrels of water. No time to stop again as I went hunting as many riders with the red number of the 100 mile route as I could chase down in the last 30 miles.
Then all hell broke loose on a section of the ride where they'd thrown in about 5 steep hills - imagine the top section of Toys Hill only twice as long and you'll get the idea - this was a cruel twist, every time you came round a bend you were confronted by another wall of road. The worst was at Dartmeet which was average 20% but steeper on the lower slopes and it was LONG. I've never seen so many people walking pushing their bikes on a sportive - it was like riding past a column of evacuees from a disaster area who'd all chosen to save their bikes. Bend after bend seemed to lead to another endless long slog across the moor and all hope of group riding had long gone as I settled into a long solo slog for home. I was just starting to feel the effects of heatstroke (Bad decision making, slow response, irrational thoughts, slight headache) when I hit the descent down to the valley and 40mph descending cooled me down.
I had time to spare to get inside the gold standard so eased back a bit before I keeled over sideways - and after such a grueling ride I was pleased to do a 20.4mph TT for the final flat 10 miles despite riding solo and into an annoying headwind.
6 hours 16mins got me a gold, felt pretty good for the first event of the year in such extreme conditions. No results posted yet so I've no idea where that puts me in the overall standings.
Free waterbottles (and water) at the end where I drank 3 litres of cold water in 10 minutes having done the whole ride on just two bottles.
Don't even ask how sever the sunburn is - there just didn't seem to be any trees on the whole ride
Awesome course, great organization, the marshalling on the junctions was amazing and its definitely elevated in status to one of the 'tougher' events on the calendar, so all in a great event which I'd highly recommend.
Anorak data:
Time: 6hrs 16mins
Highest recorded temperature: 94°
Power: 219w av
Calories: 4100kj
Drink: 2 x bottles plain water with protein powder
Food: 4 x organic figs, 2 x bananas
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