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Nice, I don't know many of those roads. Presuming you were on a slightly bigger tyre setup?
I kind of prefer solo DIYs a lot of the time, there's the massively reduced faff risk and you can be ruthless (unless you have a rock solid regular riding partner) but slight added danger of your brain telling you to pull the pin when it gets tough and no one to talk you out of it.
honk-
I did my first DIY on saturday. Was 200km - longest I've done in nearly a year so took some wireless headphones with me. Found that music and podcasts really distracted me from hitting the wall at times. I did make sure I could still hear traffic and did regular shoulder checks.
I find on calendar events, due to being fairly new to audaxes/longer distances, that seeing others leave me for dust soon after leaving Controls/cafe stops which can get quite demotivating. So will keep earphones in my bag for times when I need a distraction/get through a 30-60min low spell.
Agree with the lack of faff though - was great to just get out and go, much shorter stops which made it quicker/easy to keep a rhythm.
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Presuming you were on a slightly bigger tyre setup?
I kind of prefer solo DIYs a lot of the time
I actually put smaller tyres on, not for good reasons, just I needed to swap wheels and that was what I had, so I was on 25mm Schwalbe Ones, so basically no grip on slippery off-road sections!
Psychologically, it was interesting. My first all day ride for a year, and I really got into it once I'd done about 200km. Had a wobble around 140 when lots of things were hurting and the sunk cost wasn't too great. At about 300km I was only about 30km from home so recognised beforehand that was a danger point, but there was no way I was quitting then. And I wasn't looking forward to it getting dark when I was still on the lanes. But I really enjoyed it, much more looking back than at the time, of course!
I love tubeless. On the second last big climb in the dark lanes, I had just realised that I was in danger of running out of battery power for lights and GPS (it was ok), then I heard the rush of air from a puncture. I just said to myself, 'fuck that - no way am I getting off to sort that out - I'll let it seal at whatever pressure it wants to and just ride on it, 20psi or whatever'. It would have been really horrible to have to get off then and have to change a tube.
dsalmon
frank9755
Well done.
I did a 400 last Thursday. It was my first solo DIY, ie where I didn't tag along with someone who was doing it.
I did the Chilterns Cycleway route, with a leg out from home.
Hardest 400 I've ever done, and the slowest. Lots of lanes and ups and downs. Some off road sections, some of which were wet chalk that I had to walk, and some others I detoured round. Had hoped to be able to ride all the Chilterns bit in daylight to make the descents easier, but had an hour of dark lanes at the start and two hours at the end, when it got really slow as I had to go easy on the descents.
I enjoyed it, only considered DNFing at one point, after about 140km when things were hurting and still a long way to go.
Slightly disappointing to find that the best bits were mostly bits I already knew. The northern end near Luton was not that great -lots of fly tipping on the quiter bits and some busy roads.
https://ridewithgps.com/routes/33981022
This week I'm going up to my parents in Carlisle and thinking of a hilly 200 round the Lake District, over most of the main passes.