Tumble done. Missed my goal by 19s but still happy with my time (24m 19s). Rode there and back too! 67.7 miles all in. Discovered sunday night that the Junior Tour of Wales final stage was also finishing there at 1pm so our times are fairly down the order for the day lol!
That's 3 of my 4 goals for the year complete - Gospel pass, Tumble, 100 miles & 4500 miles for the year (which I'm well above target for).
Brutal climb, the segment starts as soon as you turn into a junction at the bottom rather than when it actually starts climbing. We stopped just after the junction but 2 of us went back to the junction for the segment. Much of the advice you'll see/hear is that things ease off after the hairpins at the bottom... It didn't really feel like it eased much at all! I found that things didn't feel any easier until crossing the cattle grid and leaving the trees. I alternated between sat grinding 80rpm at 300W and then standing to recover a little at 250W @50rpm stretching out, it was all I could do to stop to stop cramping and feel some respite. I couldn't sit and spin it at a high enough cadence to pace it any better/slower on 36T*32, maybe with a 34T front I might have been able to!
From the grid it's a long drag up the side of the Blorenge, from there once things dropped below 10% I had to spin & recover before really finding any power for the top - pretty much just holding cadence & HR and trying to ignore the low power figures as I was spent!
It's not straight so you can't see the summit and being a fairly steady gradient you end up crossing off each section of road until you go around a bend/corner to see the next stretch. Around 5-6 of them. It seems endless but the whole time the gradient is gradually lessening. The summit is quite an anticlimax once you reach it as there's hardly a distinct 'top'. With the JToW finishing there a couple of hours after us there was a painted 'finish line' on the road, I sprinted for it but Mark (who'd beaten me up there) missed to get me in his picture! Boo! There's a couple of group pics on his ride (4 of met in Abergavenny, while only he and I rode from Hereford). Had an ice cream from a van parked on the top, it was welcome as the temperatures where around 22 degrees even up there!With the 40 miles in my legs from the club/shop ride saturday morning I was really feeling the fatigue afterwards. A fairly cautious descent (I'm a nervous descender on the steep stuff!) we had a coffee in Abergavenny before splitting for the rides home. Mark and I had a fairly easy & paced 2up ride in (minor headwinds) so really enjoyed the tailwind home! Mark dropped me a couple of times on the drags back so we did stop for another ice cream... Temperatures where around 27 degrees at this point and we where utterly melting due to the lack of much winds - it was better to keep riding! Although with 178 miles ridden in 8 days (high for me!) I was pretty hanging the rest of the day spending most of it on the sofa catching up with The Vuelta!
Pffft! Maybe 5-6 links of chain and 2-3 quicklinks
The other thing to consider is - support your local bike shop! You'll get better service and better care there. It will probably cost more than Halfords but you'll get more for your money. I personally don't think I've ever taken a bike to Halfords and not needed to fix gear indexing, chain rub and tighten loose bolts myself afterwards.
Dang! Hope your wheel and everything else is ok!? It's pretty scary to consider what could've happened as that looks like quite a lucky escape! Just really consider if you really need to be riding that close to the edge/limit on a club run...!
Alcoholic
