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It was a fantastic atmosphere, I especially liked the kids (and a few adults) offering high fives to riders. That almost went very wrong at one point when I lined up for what looked like a high five but was actually a biscuit being passed up. Slapping it out of his hand wouldn't have gone down well, I suspect.
The roadside supporters were quite into the international nature of the event: One group had a large world map for riders to sign where they were from, and another was giving out their address for postcards.
I slept fitfully for 3 hours in the fart barn at Loudéac on the way out, almost got back to Loudéac on the way back but 3km short I was suddenly too sleepy to ride, so a quick bivvy. About 90 minutes of solid sleep I think. From then on it was just a quick roadside bivvy of about an hour every time I started to doze off on the bike, which was half way through each of last two legs. In the end I came in at 74 hours something, a couple of minutes ahead of 3 Brasilians on a triplet.
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I also actually put on weight and finished with a few of the SIS bars I set off with. Taking the eating competition thing a little too seriously.
I only ate 2 family-sized trifles this year, which is up from 0 last year but still makes me a bit of a lightweight in the TAW eating competition. I was down about 1kg this morning vs pre-race, but that could easily be a random fluctuation. I wasn't absurdly hungry afterwards.
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Lesson learnt: when coughing up flem and spitting it into a bush, first check that you're not still wearing your midge headnet.
It went pretty well until I ran out of food on the second to last peninsula in the early evening, with no resupply options. I put on a bit of speed to try to get to Durrus while something was open, but no. I pushed on as best I could, rationing my last morsel to last until morning. By around midnight I had the severe dozies, so I stopped for a 20 minute hedge kip. It didn't help enough though, I still couldn't safely ride a bike. That left no option but to stop for a proper sleep.
I got my head down at about 0100, woke at 0400 and was rolling again by 0425. It was already starting to get light and I felt much better. Two caffeine pills and my last little bit of chocolate for breakfast. A town, everything shut. Another town, ditto. A garage, also shut. More empty road. By now it's late enough that things will be open, and I see a sign for Clonakilty 12k. This makes me happy until I realise that it isn't 12k for me, because I'm going there via a long diversion up and down a stupid fucking hill.
Finally I get to Spar in Clonakilty and load up on food. Another 20k on survival mode and then the food has kicked in and I'm ready to race. The tracker shows that I only lost one place overnight, but someone is one hill behind me. I don't know if he's chasing me or just surviving, but for some motivation I choose to believe that he's chasing me hard and give it everything for the last 40k.
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I'm in again this year, Lesley recons last year was too sunny to count as a "proper" TAW.
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I use a very lightweight cafe lock, it's no good against anyone with tools (even a decent pair of scissors I expect) but maybe it'll be good enough for a drunk idiot who decides to try doing wheelies on my bike while I'm in the shop.
On a recent audax it also enabled me to beat the cafe control bike parking congestion, by allowing me to park on a steep slope that no one else could use without their bikes rolling away.
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Perhaps he feared a repeat of the alliston debacle
and was therefore following this advice: https://road.cc/content/blog/228327-involved-crash-heres-modest-proposal
(I don't agree with the advice btw)
What's it like riding a bike with a small child in a child seat on the back ? I'd have though it would feel a bit dodgy if the kid starts squirming around.
We have a 2.5 year old staying with us ATM, and we're trying to choose between child seat and trailer for transporting him by bike.