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| The Joys Of Winter Audaxing Await! |
For many of us this was our first taste of an audax and we had chosen a tough one with a 62 mile route and around 5,000 feet of climbing. Eleven of us were taking part but Derek’s group set off before us expecting that we would catch them up at some point (we didn't manage this ).
I was in the largest group with Jason , John V, kie, Lee, Mark B and on only his second ride after a long break Steve B (knee problems). Despite so long off the bike, Steve was looking impressively thin so was confident he would manage the ride OK. I was very impressed when Kie, Jason and John told me they had ridden over to the start and were riding back! Rather them than me I thought, I couldn’t imagine doing that much riding pushing the mileage to over 100 miles. Our rate of progress over the first ten miles was incredibly slow as Jason’s trip to the supermarket to buy some sweeties for us took longer than expected, Mark somehow got separated from us but managed to find us again and then Lee had a puncture. At this rate our Garmins predicted we would finish by 8pm! Things went more smoothly from this point but we were all shocked at the state of the roads. The route so far was almost all small country lanes covered in mud and potholes (as Andy F would say- shitty little lanes), these had to be taken with great care. Our brakes were being made to earn their keep and the blocks were wearing down at an alarming rate, I started the day with almost brand new pads at the back but by the end these were down to 50% and the front ones had barely enough meat left to stop. With all the heavy breaking downhill we had no momentum left for the following uphill and so the climbing was even harder than it looked on the route. Welcome relief was had at Mayfield where there was a check point and a friendly café.
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| Welcome Relief At Mayfield! |
Endless riding on more minor country lanes followed, in many ways it felt more like an mtb ride rather than a road ride, I felt like I was on some great adventure in a world of trees and mud. There were very few cars, I don’t think their owners would contemplate driving down roads in such poor condition. Approaching Hartfield the roads became wider and better maintained but this was not time to relax as the spectre of Kidd’s hill was looming. I hadn't studied the route very carefully so wasn't sure whether we would be riding up the steep eastern side (the wall) or the longer more gentle western side . Our Garmin’s directed us up the western side and I settled into a nice steadily rhythm which would take me comfortably up to the top but then half way up the bread crumb trail on the display suddenly pointed hard right down another muddy little lane . This cruelly took away all the altitude we had gained dumping us down at the bottom of the hard eastern side of the hill and just to add to the pleasure there was massive deep puddle at the bottom which completely filled my left shoe with icy cold water. The climb up the wall was actually Ok as the road was in good condition and the angle was not too steep.
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| Despite Being Thin Steve was To Suffer later! |
Unsurprisingly Steve was really struggling by now but needed to stay with us as his gps wasn’t working. On reaching Mayfield there was only 15 miles to go. Steve went off on his own following the paper directions (Chris P would approve) while the rest of us stopped at the same café again to refuel and check in again. We were one of the last groups to check in and left the café with only three minutes to spare. The last 15 miles were on much wider B or A roads so we were confident of getting back within an hour. What we hadn't banked on was that the wind had suddenly picked up creating a head wind, the sun had disappeared and it was now much colder. Mark and I were struggling quite a bit and got dropped by the others. These last 15 miles seemed to go on for ever, despite trying not to I reached that point where you start ticking off every mile you can see on the gps, 15,14,13,12,11 until eventually there were only 10 miles left which psychologically made the riding seem easier and before too long we found ourselves back at the start. For myself , Lee and Mark our riding was over and we were all glad we would be driving home in a nice warm car but for the others they had another 20 miles to ride in the cold! Kie had already ridden further than he ever had before and I was worried that he would bonk on the way back. John thought though he would fine and that the wind would now be at their backs. Sure enough Kie had enough energy left to hold John’s wheel and has successfully joined the 'century club'.
This was a great introduction to the ‘pleasures’ of audax. Many thanks to Andy savoir who organised the event. There is another one of And’s audaxes coming up next month, ‘Mad jack Fuller’ This makes the hailsham audax seem easy as its 20km longer and has about 2,000 extra feet of climbing. For me this is too much but I know that John and some of the others cant wait to do it.
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