[Closed] Ridgeway double attempt

Another triffic fred, hope it's all gone well, 180miles off road is some feet 8)

Just a few more miles in the dark, keep on moving....

about 15 miles, in the dark best part 2hours???? to go looking at the tracker and one last climb, which from memory drags on for an eternity! Oh and the absolutely horrible last descent back down to the Sanctuary.

C'mon Mols!

Spot is a bit behind again. He must be in for some serious rutting in the dark soon 🙂

looks like he is at Barbury Castle, so one little kick and downhill through the ruts and he is home. Hopefully he'll not do something stupid this late in the day.

At the White Horse on Hackpen Hill, not far to go. 🙂

🙂

c'mon molly!

Finished?

Looks like he's done it! 😀

Well done molgrips, a terrific achievement. 😀

[img] [/img]

[img] [/img]

Great effort fellah

The man hasn't posted but everything says he's done it; what a fabulous achievement!

I applaud you and raise a glass - hic......

Great effort!

Fantastic achievement

Tip top stuff!!

DrP

Chapeau!

[img] [/img]

Was watching this last night.

Well done Molgrips.

Looking forward to the ride report.

Thanks for all the support and interest folks, has made me really happy 🙂

I did manage it, got in something like midnight ish can't remember. I didn't post because there was no signal at the camp site.

I think the time was about 17.5 hours. I'd have saved half an hour if I hadn't spent so long farting about with my GPS.

Feel tired but ok today. My ankles hurt for some reason, never had that on a bike before. Also my eyes are really red and sore, must've got some cow poo or something in there.

Overtime hill was shite on the way up and absolutely murder on the way down. Had my only crash a few km from the end, a little annoyed to lose my clean sheet 🙂

Full report later.

Xxx

Look forward to your ride report molgrips. 🙂

Well done Mol, epic!

Great effort Mol, well done 🙂 Funnily enough, I injured my left ankle during my Ridgeway Double ride, and I was also riding rigid. A lot of small bumps hour after hour was my theory.

Thanks 🙂

Yes could be the bumps hurting my ankles. It's the tendons over the bone bump, they are grinding somehow.

Thinking about my performance during the ride is pretty interesting. Seems like there's three zones; the first four hours or five hours feels like a normal bike ride and I get tired, then things settle down and I pick up a bit and ride steadily until say 11 hours or so then I enter this strange zone where I can find all sorts of power to honk up some climbs then totally collapse on others.

I need more experience in that last zone to help me understand how to pace better. Feel like maybe I could have gone harder earlier and been home sooner.

Rigid seems to really help in that respect as I find it much better to stand up and honk on the pedals in that state than to sit and spin. Something to do with muscle activation in the seated position. Definitely more crampy.

well done Molgrips, superb achievement 🙂 I expect your eyes are sore from concentrating and looking at where your front wheel is going for such a long time!

bloody good effort molgrips

Craving rich meaty savoury tasty food, rather than my usual cake and starch. Just randomly made spag bol for lunch. Nothing tastes like it has enough salt!

nice one molegrips 😀

whichever way you look at it you just cycled a long way off road fair play to you sir (you deserve a nice cake now 😀

edit a cake with salt in it by what you just said above (i will pass though if ok 😮

https://www.strava.com/activities/1166353213

Time seems to be 17.43 roughly according to the analysis page on Strava. Not great compared to the leaderboard but not last!

Also got quite a few PRs (as compared to last year's evening rides) and there's a segment someone's set for the Western Ridgeway (proper bit) and I'm fourth overall out of 84 and only two places behind Adam Hooley. It's three and a half hours, I reckon I could go back and take second 🙂

2 hours stationary surprised me a bit. I mean these things all add up, but I'd have expected less than that. I wish I had kept focus more and not spent so much time trying to get my GPS to work properly. That must've been half an hour.

I wonder if I could sort out some kind of stop clock to keep an eye on how much time spent stopped? If I wore a watch that could work. I wonder if a smart watch would be useful on these rides?

Well done.

Surprising just how much time you spend not moving even when you think you aren't wasting time. Last year on the YD300 I took 31hrs54, this year I took 28hrs55 but my actual riding time was just one minute quicker at 24hrs37! Everything else was less faffing. Two hours of that 4.5hrs was a "bivy".

Not sure which GPS you have but on the Oregon you can set up fields for overall time and moving time (similarly for avg speed). Trying to keep the two as close as possible is quite hard work.

Garmin Edge Touring. I don't have a moving time field, but what we really need is a 'stopped time' field.

The problem I had with it was that after a while it did its usual thing of getting confused when routing, and set my next point as 6,400km away. Ok, but when I stopped and restarted nav it wanted me to start from the beginning of the course (even though I selected no to the navigate to start question) rather than pick up the route where I was, in the middle. So navigation was basically not working which led to me taking a lot of wrong turnings when it was dark and I couldn't see the screen. And riding half a km or so down the wrong route.

Well done molgrips, in regards to the GPS, did it get confused by the out and back route or did you split it into two separate legs?

I've got a Garmin Edge Touring.

I'm slightly amazed that Garmin have the cheek to sell it - it gets confused very easily.

It feels as though it runs out of memory trying to hold all the data points, and handles this really badly.

If you cut down the number of points on your course that seems to help. And turn off all the clever autorouting settings.

Well done, you certainly "made progress" 🙂

Although I have used my Edge 510 for off-road rides (just recording not navigating) I tend to regard all the Edge series as being for road riding and use one of the more general devices, in my case the Oregon, for off-road riding.

I'm not even sure the Oregon has auto-route or similar. TBH I've got it set up that I can use it even when tired and don't have to think about things, i.e. simpleton mode. It can handle long routes/courses without problem. The one irritant is that if you scroll the map then it assumes that you want to place a waypoint or POI and goes into a subtly different mode.

Just checked and it seems that the [url= http://www8.garmin.com/manuals/webhelp/oregon6xx/EN-US/GUID-BD3EE28F-6054-4180-B228-5C654056CBB2.html ]Oregon can display stopped time[/url] since the last reset.

Hey Mol, could you crop the ride so it's just the ITT route & send it over to me please? Gotta get you on that leaderboard 🙂

Agree re the Garmin. So close to being a fantastic device, but it's the following of GPXes that cocks it up. All other navigation works well enough - except for the routing is a bit weird, but you could work around that.

Pedalhead - yep will do, your leaderboard needs some propping up near the bottom 🙂

PS your route seems to finish halfway along the road that leads to the Beacon under a random tree, about 300m short of the last point before the footpath to the Beacon...

Well done! As for stopping 2hrs isn't bad considering you shopped for food etc. I took 50odd minutes just weeing and filling 4 bottles (separately I might add)

Hmm, looking at the two files in Tracklogs, there's a trackpoint exactly on the corner of the road by the start of the footpath that actually takes you to Ivinghoe Beacon (which is correct).

[img] [/img]

That's odd. More Garmin weirdness perhaps. Looks like the penultimate trackpoint is the one that it flagged up as the end. I carried on to the corner of the road though - just because.

Well done Molly!! Cracking effort for a self-proclaimed sprinter 😉

Genuine praise from The Southern Yeti - that makes it all worthwhile 🙂

Two days later and I'm already looking at my next one.. insanity isn't it?

molgrips - Member
Two days later and I'm already looking at my next one.. insanity isn't it?

Considering my lack of desire to ever visit the SDW again after riding it in one day, yes, you're clearly insane.

Think that's standard. As the pain recedes the 'what ifs' start...

Not going to lie... I didn't think you'd actually do it and I'm glad I was proven wrong!

Why you'd do another though? Crazy.

I'm even mulling over the possibility of doing it AGAIN next year to set a better time....!

My next would have to be Wales coast-to-coast probably, although it seems there are no definitive routes. But most seem to finish in my home town.

Great effort molgrips!

Molly..give the SDW a bash - it's another iconic long distance route...

I'd be keen to ride the ridgeway - one way at first, to explore/learn.. THen would have a go at the SS record!
DrP

SS record is a tough ask. Pedalhead is up there on just about every hill KOM in the area!

Going to be giving this a crack next yr be rude not too as it's on my doorstep.

First ever 'blog' post, so be gentle.

[url= https://yesiamgoingforabikeride.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/the-ridgeway-double.html ]Ride report.[/url]

Excellent write up! I drew up the route exactly for this kind of scenario...where someone is pushing themselves a bit out of their comfort zone, but can see that it's achievable. Great ride. SDD next...! 😀

PS...don't forget to send me your route!

SS record is a tough ask. Pedalhead is up there on just about every hill KOM in the area!

I've been a bit lazy this year so I'm losing them all the time! DrP sounds a bit handy, would be ace to have some singlespeed competition on the leaderboard.

Nice one.

Recognise most of the mental states 😀 Riding for long periods at night can get particularly weird.

Try the Raspberry Ripple flavour Torq gel - instant memories of childhood!

I switch between a single water bottle and a small camelbak (Lobo) depending on the likely availability/frequency of water supplies. I don't think there's a perfect answer other than either knowing the route or a lot of research which almost amounts to the same thing.

SDD next...!

I think I want to do Wales C2C, if anyone has a definitive route let me know.

Re bottles, I find the bike rides less well over bumps when it's laden. Dunno if that would be an issue longer distance or not.

The ITT Welsh coast to coast is [url= https://cambriantrail.wordpress.com/ ]The Cambrian Trail[/url]. There's also the older one based on Sarn Helen but I've not seen info on that.

I thought there was a shorter one than that? 200 miles? Lots of links to Dave Buchanan's site but it's offline.

If you are looking at something around the 200 mile distance then check out selfsupporteduk.net - there's a few 300Km (186 mile) then a bit of a jump.

Great blog molgrips, really enjoyed reading about your journey.

How about the Braunton 150 loop. "Only"150 miles but tough going. Fantastic riding though in stunning scenery. If you properly get the bug then you'll be thinking of the ht550.....

Thanks SD. I plan to update it with more stuff.

Hm, Braunton one looks good. Not that far to travel for me.

Thanks Mol. I'll be using that as research/inspiration for my own SDD attempt.