Southern Sportive - Perhaps I should've stayed in bed?

Today was the Southern Sportive - 97 miles criss-crossing the South Downs. The weather started bright but clouded over, unlike my day that started cloudy but got brighter towards the end. Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin.

I missed my alarm so was half an hour late getting up. This wasn't the end of the world but it was just a precurser to a bad start to the day. I arrived in Petersfield and found the start location but was directed on to one of the other car parks, but I couldn't find it! I eventually found a car park and put my bike together and then went to pump the tyres up. We'ver all heard that horrible "pssshhhhhh" sound before and the tyre goes immediately flat - bugger. Anyway, I changed the inner tube (the old one had split alongside the valve) and rode up to register and get to the start line. It was quite windy that would be a pain throughout the day, but it was the same for everyone.

So I had been late - Strike 1 - had to change an inner tube - Strike 2 - and we all know bad things come in 3s; so what was waiting for me? Well I didn't have to wait long. 3km into the ride and we headed up the first hill - I stood on the pedals and "Bang!" (or whatever sound a chain makes when it breaks). Oh ****! Fortunately a good Samaritan stopped; he didn't have a new link but he did have a chain tool and we removed another link and put the chain together and I was on my way again. We had had to re-use the chain pin so it was only ever going to be a temporary repair, but I was hoping for more than 4km! Yep, the next big hill and "Bang!", it happened again. The temporary repair was just not up to the power. :-) This time the good Samaritan had a quick link and this time I was properly back in business. I had, though, lost a whole bunch of time and my hoped for gold standard ride had gone out of the window with barely 7 km under my wheels. Shortly after I came across a straggler by the side of the road and after all my dramas I couldn't just ride by, so stopped and helped him out. All in all, these stops had cost me about 25 minutes and I covered a pathetic 19km in the first hour. But from this point on things were good.

The Southern Sportive is one tough ride, there are some steep hills but in the main the hills are long. And steep. Duncton (spelling?) Hill just seems to go on and on and on. But I was making progress and my average speed was increasing from its Hour 1 low. I was spinning steadily up the hills, working hard on the flats and pushing my comfort zone on the descents. The drop from Goodwood Racecourse was a real thrill; about halfway down I grabbed a look at my speedo that was saying 75kmh - I didn't dare look again! Anyway, the miles were steadily ticked off and after the final feed stop there were just 30km to go and I decided I would make an effort and see what happened. I continued to ride steadily up the hills but on the flats I worked very hard and was overtaking a lot of people. With about 5km to go I caught a chaingang and just rode straight passed them at about 45kmh! I was feeling really strong and just went for it. The legs were good (don't get me wrong, they were sore, but they responded brilliantly) and I finished with a flourish clocking up 158km. Excellent. Not sure what my official finish time was but my riding time was 5:34:35, so I had the pace for a gold standard finish.

After the dramas at the start I could have quite easily just thrown in the towel, but I'm really glad I didn't. It was a great ride and I would like to go back next year and ride a good ride from start to finish, without any mechanical issues. I think it's fair to say that the groupset on my Litespeed is somewhat tired and needs replacing so that will be my winter project. I'm happy that I have the endurance for Barcelona although whether I have sufficient time in the TT position on my Dolan we shall ahve to wait and see.

And finally, it looks like we may have a team member change for Barcelona, but this post is long enough already so that will have to wait for another day