Tell us about your weekend ride

@bluefoot - That's almost as good as the hay bale pig that used to be out near Moreton promoting British pork :)

I haven't done one of these for ages. This weekend I did the Rural South 300 audax with Corlis Benefideo. It's a 300km audax which was restarted after a few years off the calendar: last run in 2009 I think.

In all honesty I was rather nervous about this. I last did a 300 in 2011 (terrible) although this time I would be on my magic carpet carbon audax bike, not a steel track bike. I figured this would help. I also figured that starting at 6am instead of midnight would also help.

I figured that a rather large amount of climbing probably wouldn't help, but I tried not to think about that.

We decided to ride out to the glamorous Reading Whitley Travelodge from town on Friday night, which was 52 miles. I was a bit nervous about that too, but thought a gentle ride out would warm my legs up nicely for the main event.

We set off from the Travelodge for the start at Beech Hill at 5.30am on deserted roads, and crossed the A33 gyratory as the rising sun sat low in the sky like a giant fireball. We reached Beech Hill for the 6am start, to be greeted by mugs of tea and toast, then set off about five or ten minutes after the* Grand Départ.*

We were straight into lovely empty lanes as we headed west then south to Alresford for breakfast.

After that we headed down to Portsdown for a control overlooking Portsmouth, just after we passed the radar station.

As well as being hilly it had got hot by this point - my Garmin recorded about 28/29 degrees for the rest of the ride before it started to cool in the evening - and we were about 70 miles in. The squash from the back of the organiser's car was very welcome.

We headed inland to the Meon Valley, favoured haunt of Dammits, which was super pretty.

After taking a slight detour to ascend Butser Hill (the highest point on the South Downs) we did a big loop of West Sussex and Surrey, heading back to Alresford before heading north to skirt Basingstoke then heading back to the finish. The hills were relentless until the 180 mile point, when it was pretty much downhill all the way (apart from the uphill bits).

By the pub control at Selborne (157 miles in) I was starting to feel the heat and the hills. My arms were also starting to ache. I thought this was just me, but later found out that everyone else was having the same problem as the road surfaces weren't that great.

We pressed on, passing over a particularly bumpy bit before reaching Alresford to head north.

Unfortunately I noticed 180 miles in that my Garmin screen had gone blank. I thought it had gone flat, but it turns out 800's have a bug where they often throw a paddy at the 300km point and it wiped out the last 25 miles it had recorded.

It would be fair to say that suddenly discovering that I was part of Garmin's product testing team was not good for the morale, and at that point I wanted to throwing the fecking thing in the hedge after repeatedly whacking it with a large hammer and killing it in the face with fire.

Perhaps it was related, although I think it may be more to do with not eating enough at the final control, as after coping quite well for the first 190 miles, I went into quite a difficult place for the last 10 miles and it felt like much longer than that. I had to ask Corlis (who has done about 2500 more miles than me so far this year, to be fair) to slow down a bit, then a few minutes later stop while I devoured a bag of sweets in about 10 seconds flat.

I was very glad to see the warm glow of the lights of the village hall at Beech Hill out of the darkness, where we devoured pasta and cake with decaf tea (providing decaf tea was a real stroke of genius) and engaged in a little audax banter. I didn't have much energy left by this point so it was mostly listening while the more experienced, more energetic riders related tales of the road.

Then a gentle 6 miles back to the Travelodge to make the total for the day 201 miles, and I don't know how much climbing altogether, but my Garmin had recorded over 3000 metres in the first 157 miles before it developed selective amnesia.

It was a great (if challenging) route with lots of beautiful scenery and lovely roads, and I'd highly recommend it if anyone fancies a hilly 300 that isn't too far away next summer.