2009-07-04 Sat - Dunwich Dynamo 2009

The head wind was a killer, I actually can't even remember that climb to Clapham North...

And I had a very firm word with a kid in a car who almost knocked me off and tried to go into Clefty's wheel. He was pretty scared. You don't fuck with a French woman who has just ridden 120 miles.

makes mental note

Its really nice to read the stories and experiences people have come back with! :)

really great ride, my first time doing the DD and certainly not the last.
I was suprised by how comfy my (new) shorts and saddle combo worked, which made my day as it was a big worry for me.

but anyway it was really fun!

My arse is pretty damn sore.

Very amusing seeing Jonny's head poke out the window of the train at ipswich.

Good work all!

You don't fuck with a French woman who has just ridden 120 miles.

LOL

Good ride, wonderful power blast 20(?) miles with Jayjeesus to get to the food stop, proper peloton action! Thanks to Clefty for the sustenance (bagel power!) and the music, and VeeVee for the Garmin....oh wait...no, not that...
Managed to meet up with some CycleChat peeps and breakfast at our portable breakfast campervan to avoid the queues, lovely bacon and egg etc :)
Total mileage 143.3, not too bad.

Awesome ride, good company and great weather. Sod all this coach malarky though... train next year or feed station and back.

Nice clipping along with friendly peeps:
1st half with Marco, Simon, Hugh (gooch paste ftw), Matt
2nd half with Jonny, Aroogah, Sam, Soul.

Nice to Bump into/meet others, Wibble, Clefty, Spaghoops, 50/14 et al

Greenbank, Oliver and those who rode back: EPIC

I was riding with Daniel, whom I'd met on the Exmouth Exodus last month, and who's a strong rider training for LEL. We'd started out from Dunwich together with Greenbank and his mate Scott, but inexplicably lost them in the annoying gravelly lane just after/before (depending on whether you were going from or to Dunwich). Greenbank, what happened? We waited for you for a good while, but no news. Hope you were alright/didn't have a mechanical!

Sorry about that, we had a slightly different route in our GPSes (it differed from this years route in two places near the end) and we decided to stick with it rather than risk being taken off route and then dropped, sorry you waited for ages for us, we tried to shout to you to just carry on.

Can't have been far away from you, we bumped into someone else cycling back saying he'd been riding with you but couldn't keep up. We then saw Daniel pass through Great Dunmow as we were grabbing some food in a cafe. You're right that he looks like a strong rider, he'll enjoy LEL (as will I, but probably not with as much time in hand).

I got back about 45 minutes ago as I had to finish my ride in Putney (as planned for my DIY Audax ride). 434km in total; a shade under 27 hours from the start in Dorking and a ride up Box Hill on the way to Hackney. Need beer and to burn all of the clothes I was wearing.

A nice long ride event. I enjoyed it a lot but don't ask me now if I would do it again.

I did have a moment of heavy heaviness at the 60 miles feeding place, i was wondering what the fuck I'm doing here, i don't belong to this. But that bad moment was gone quite quickly thanks to the fantastic food.....

It was good to make team with Simon, Hugh and Matt. Simon your voice can make amazing sounds.... it has been a really good laugh. And Hugh who is, the sense of humor. Thanks Matt, I really appreciate for sharing your last piece of bread with me.

I also enjoyed seeing some of the compadres.. , which appeared and disappeared, appeared and disappeared....yes, I will see you soon.

It was Nice to bump in so many nice people, especially Dave4, Jung, dropout, braker, Sparrow,Keith of Tour de Ville, Oliver on his way back, hope to ride with you soon for something more compact.

Emilia you were right, the umbrella for the arrival not the swim wear like me.

A huge thanks to huge16 for giving me a lift back and keeping the right pace with also kidding until the end.

cheers for a good ride everyone, especially JayGeesus, VeeVee, Clefty, Fiddy, Wibble, Radius and Fred (your gillet is well gay).

especially enjoyed the fast section with Jay as the sun was coming up, that was awesome.

Sorry about that, we had a slightly different route in our GPSes (it differed from this years route in two places near the end) and we decided to stick with it rather than risk being taken off route and then dropped, sorry you waited for ages for us, we tried to shout to you to just carry on.

Can't have been far away from you, we bumped into someone else cycling back saying he'd been riding with you but couldn't keep up. We then saw Daniel pass through Great Dunmow as we were grabbing some food in a cafe. You're right that he looks like a strong rider, he'll enjoy LEL (as will I, but probably not with as much time in hand).

I got back about 45 minutes ago as I had to finish my ride in Putney (as planned for my DIY Audax ride). 434km in total; a shade under 27 hours from the start in Dorking and a ride up Box Hill on the way to Hackney. Need beer and to burn all of the clothes I was wearing.

You ultra-distance riders are fucking nutters. Thankfully I don't have the time or patience to ride for that long - at the weird moderate pace you all seem to thrive on ;)

That was my longest ride to date today, and about 80 miles in I lost all my energy and crawled the last 30 or so miles to Dunwich. Got in at 8 after the first 60/70 miles feeling brilliant. Lots of respect to all of the chaps arriving before dawn...

Rode in the big group at the start (I had a skeleton jersey on) and then the second group after the pub stop (with gottimobs, Dave and a few others - rubbish with names). Great fun guys, fast pace and plenty of rest stops. More training for next year and hopefully it should be a bit faster and more pain free.

talking of pace todays tour stage was 116miles and a lot more hills than the DD.
4hrs30min! and a sprint finish. average speed nearly 26mph.

That's slow. I've been in quicker 90 mile 4th cat road races*.

*(better drugs)

I am fucked! As mentioned before, i worked 9 till 6 yesterday, went straight to the start via isle of dogs from st pauls, went all the way to ipswich (100 miles by the time we got to near where we needed to be) as we had to get to work for 10am, which was a shame, because i wanted to go for a swim! And worked from 10 till 5, and have only really just got into bed.

Good ride though, i love fixed long distance, it's a challenge but it's so rewarding. Silly when you spin a fecker keeping up with a geared roadie when he's using the topend of his gears too, but fun.

Brb, going to sleep, cya in about 4 days.

Wow, slipped into bed for a quick half hour kip, just woke up now all dazed and confused, must be time to start drinking.

Brilliant ride, my first Dunwich and about twice the distance I'd ever been before.

Great to meet/ride with/wave at so many people. Especially the group the little group we settled into, Simon, Huge (thanks for the lift home), Marco and Sam (until he decided to leave us, suggesting the pace was a bit high for him but then joining an even faster group). Cheers Simon for dragging me along at pace on the alternative route we "chose" to take for the last 20 or so miles.

Marco? Bread? Oh - I see! Ha!

^ Felt like i'd overcooked it at the start and I was assured by Aroogah that the pace would be 'steady'.... It wasn't, but at least i missed the rain :)

Sorry about that, we had a slightly different route in our GPSes (it differed from this years route in two places near the end) and we decided to stick with it rather than risk being taken off route and then dropped, sorry you waited for ages for us, we tried to shout to you to just carry on.

Ah, that was it--I half suspected that, as you'd said at Dunwich that you had a different GPS trail. You didn't go via Yoxford, did you?

Can't have been far away from you, we bumped into someone else cycling back saying he'd been riding with you but couldn't keep up.

Uh, who was that? Do you mean someone riding back? I can't for the life of me remember anyone else. Or did they start riding back later than us?

We then saw Daniel pass through Great Dunmow as we were grabbing some food in a cafe. You're right that he looks like a strong rider, he'll enjoy LEL (as will I, but probably not with as much time in hand).

He's very strong and constant and fairly impervious to the elements except for heat and strong sunshine--the latter two really make him suffer, as he burns and overheats quite easily, he said. I'm almost the opposite.

I got back about 45 minutes ago as I had to finish my ride in Putney (as planned for my DIY Audax ride). 434km in total; a shade under 27 hours from the start in Dorking and a ride up Box Hill on the way to Hackney. Need beer and to burn all of the clothes I was wearing.

Don't you want to donate them to a museum?

Well done! I wish I could have made it back.

woooow, first epic ride on a recumbent, and i think i need my knees upgrading. The most social, festive dunwich i've been on, met lovely people, maybe cos we did it so slow and all had time to chat - so much time the penny actually caught us up at one point. awesome.

Didn't see you at all, Jo! I only spotted Patrick, Sean, and Denise on their recumbents on the way back. You must have already got to Dunwich by that time. I should really have spotted you, but there were so many there that even a recumbent didn't stand out. Or were you in Charlotte's group? Glad you had such a good ride!

Hot baked beans and sausages from my flask at the feed station was the best thing ever...once that kicked in about ten miles past the feed station i felt so good.

Was so happy with my bike setup...all my bags worked great, especially happy with the huge saddle bag which remained stable the whole way and held all my spare clothes and my flask, mini D, wet wipes, etc...it was so good changing into dry clothes at Dunwich...thankful for my mudguards...only failure was my front brake...i was too bloody embarrased to use it cos it was so noisy due to the paint not being rubbed off the rims yet :) so basically rode it brakeless again.
I f*cking LOVE the SIS energy gels too...they kept me going so well, and taste so good.
It was hilarious to finally get Tricity Bendix to try one later in the ride and see the results when it kicked in...like an 8 yr old on smarties...we were drunk on energy gels at that point and talking shit really kept us going :)

Oh and the Garmin...it was great to turn it on 20 miles into the ride only to find that the route that Object said he had saved on it that morning wasn't on there... "you have NO saved rides"....that was a fun moment! :)
It then died about 5 miles into our return journey home leaving us with no way to navigate as we weren't doing the same route back, so myself and Tricity Bendix ended up riding back towards Dunwich and got the train from Darsham....only managed about 135 miles in total :( next year though :)
Quite funny too to see about 20 bikers storm the two carriage train at Darsham, only to have the conductor go crazy, stop the train at the next station and refuse to continue until enough bikes and riders got off, then see a female member of the public on the train go nuts and start taking peoples bikes off herself after giving a big speech about how selfish we all were and saying "for fucks sake, get on your bikes and ride them"...yeah, all the way back to London luv? I felt really bad for the people she ejected at that station who had a two hour wait for the next train and would have had the same problem again :(

It was great riding with Tricity Bendix and Davey C all the way, also Fred for quite a bit of it too.
@Tricity...next time we take a spare brake bolt so you don't need to ride brakeless on 48 x 16 and use the bushes in the ditch as a stopping method :)
Thanks to the guy on the Cervelo who very kindly butchered his rear brake to allow Tricity to ride the rest of the route safely.

All in, a really good DD again.

*note to self...only sleeping for 3 hours the night before the DD is NOT a good idea..neither is deciding to completely remake the saddle bag on the morning of the DD and not finishing it until the afternoon, then going out to find a flask, a new chain etc....then coming back and deciding what i'm gonna wear and take late afternoon, and finally realise about an hour before it's time to go that i haven't eaten a proper meal or made any food to take....rushing round doing all that while everyone else is dressed and ready to go was far too stressful :) *

Oh yeah, and my tri bars got nicknamed 'the bridge' as they were perfect at allowing me to catch up with groups of riders who were a long way down the road...i could drop onto them and fly down the road with minimum effort and join the next group...my whole bar setup worked great infact...cruising and climbing was so much easier on this setup...passing geared riders on climbs on a fixed bike that must have weighed about 50lbs in total was a nice feeling. :)

Did you make all your bags yourself, Scott?

And I wonder whether, if the Dynamo keeps getting bigger, at some point one/some special train(s) might not be put on from Darsham--there seems to be ample capacity on that line on Sundays.

That was ACE. I owe several beers to the guy on the Cervelo who lent me the brake bolt (Alby I think?), you have saved me countless hedge injuries. (I did slightly deliriously announce 'oh well, maybe I'll get really good at riding brakeless and be able to ride my Panasonic to Herne Hill' but after the first downhill was massively steep and had a lovely sign saying 'blind descent' or something I changed my mind and decided throwing myself into a hedge was a preferable option.)

I totally loved the last 60 miles, though whoever told me it was flat was LYING - but I ended up having all kinds of fun whinging that my gearing was too high, walking up all the hills and then overtaking everyone who'd passed me a couple of minutes later, so it worked out quite nicely. No leg pain + drunk on energy gels = definitely good for morale.

The only problem was there was absolutely no shelter left by the time we got to Dunwich at about half seven - ridiculous queue for the cafe and every single beach hut and under-boat space was taken, so we ended up sitting on the beach in the (pretty heavy) rain for ages and I went all pale and had to be revived by a kindly man's whisky flask. And yeah, they definitely need to sort the train situation out. There was all sorts of bribery and corruption going on on the beach with people trying to get hold of coach tickets.

So, yeah, didn't quite manage there and back but it was a bit tricky with no GPS and our terrible senses of direction (and Scott didn't mention that I actually got off my bike 5 miles out of Dunwich and tried to go to sleep in a layby, though I blame that on the rain breaking my ridiculously good mood cos I was well up for riding back as soon as we'd got to the beach at Dunwich). Next time.

Well done everyone who did it, especially both ways or part of the way back.

That was ACE. I owe several beers to the guy on the Cervelo who lent me the brake bolt (Alby I think?), you have saved me countless hedge injuries. (I did slightly deliriously announce 'oh well, maybe I'll get really good at riding brakeless and be able to ride my Panasonic to Herne Hill' but after the first downhill was massively steep and had a lovely sign saying 'blind descent' or something I changed my mind and decided throwing myself into a hedge was a preferable option.)

I totally loved the last 60 miles, though whoever told me it was flat was LYING - but I ended up having all kinds of fun whinging that my gearing was too high, walking up all the hills and then overtaking everyone who'd passed me a couple of minutes later, so it worked out quite nicely. No leg pain + drunk on energy gels = definitely good for morale.

The only problem was there was absolutely no shelter left by the time we got to Dunwich at about half seven - ridiculous queue for the cafe and every single beach hut and under-boat space was taken, so we ended up sitting on the beach in the (pretty heavy) rain for ages and I went all pale and had to be revived by a kindly man's whisky flask. And yeah, they definitely need to sort the train situation out. There was all sorts of bribery and corruption going on on the beach with people trying to get hold of coach tickets.

So, yeah, didn't quite manage there and back but it was a bit tricky with no GPS and our terrible senses of direction (and Scott didn't mention that I actually got off my bike 5 miles out of Dunwich and tried to go to sleep in a layby, though I blame that on the rain breaking my ridiculously good mood cos I was well up for riding back as soon as we'd got to the beach at Dunwich). Next time.

Well done everyone who did it, especially both ways or part of the way back.

Got there 40 minutes before you, having attached myself riding with Radius to two unknown Bianchi riders, one of whom had Garmin. Found unlikely shelter in the the cafe food storage room which had at least 4 giant freezers, all kicking out welcome massive heat! Remember for next time! We had serious problems with route finding, and got very lost 4 times.I wonder if the route can be printed on an ordinary map from bikely, or similar. However, epic experience all told, would not have missed it. Belated congratulations to Oliver, the only forum member I never saw.

BTW Albi is a gent of the highest order, he lent another cervelo to Andy's girlfriend Sarah so that she could do the ride. Chapeau.

Ooh, I was admiring her bike. What a star.

Forgot to say, it was brilliant bumping into people all the time - loads of people from the forum, people I used to work with, people I've spotted in London and admired the bikes of, etc. It was quite hard to leave that first pub, felt a bit like a Monday night at Souths with all the familiar faces.

Sorry to hear about your exploding spoke Oliver, I'm glad you got back to London OK.

And thank you to Scott not scot for being awesome riding company... that second half was SO much fun. Totally loved getting drunk on energy gel, racing up (some of the) hills and shouting 'GEEESE!' every time you hit your brake.

Three years on the forum and three DD'd missed. I feel like a cunt.

It all sounds amazing and I am so jealous. Super-Chapeaux to all of you, what a sterling effort and amazing event. I'm pretty sure that it was the DD that inspired Cav to the green jersey yesterday.

Must. Ride. More.