Rides: Exe-Buzzard 600km Perm

Definitely a ride of two halves! But I finished in time, just.

I decided to ride the Buzzard as redemption for my utter failure on the Anglesey & Back. It’s a pretty straightforward 600 without any serious hills, although it’s by no means flat. The Buzzard has 5400m of climbing – not far short of the 1:10 ratio that marks the approximate boundary between benevolent and hilly. By way of comparison, the Back to the Smoke 400km that Andy & I steamed round last month has 3000m.

Set off at 6am with the usual loadout: 2 litres of iced tea plus a 750ml bottle, bagged portions of tea powder in another bottle, four banananananas, guava blocks, a pack of teacakes and some Babybel cheese.

The forecast was for a decent tailwind all day, so I made good progress, despite a puncture in Wells. That gave me a chance to use my new electric pump:

https://www.flextail.com/products/tiny-bike-pump-pro-120psi-high-pressure-and-led-display-bike-pump

It might seem lazy or indulgent, but manually pumping up tyres is hard work, even with the Topeak Mountain Morph I carry. That’s energy that I’d rather not spend, especially towards the end of a ride when I’ll be tired. The Morph comes with me anyway, but the Flextail has a weigh penalty of just 130g and can easily be recharged from a powerbank. It’ll do 3-4 road tyres, depending on size and pressure.

The first 300km went in 13:25, which is pretty fast, so I felt pleased with myself. Once I hit Leighton Buzzard the route turned SSE, and the tailwind became a cross-head. That instantly slowed me down and made the 72km to the hotel hard work. Got there an hour ahead of my anticipated schedule though, despite being generous with my stops. Had a lovely hot shower, half a pasty and a bottle of cider before hitting the pillow.

The main calculation on any 600 is ‘how much time have I got for sleep?’. The usual time allowed for a 600 is 40hrs, but for a perm you get an extra couple of hours. I’d taken 17:10 to get to the hotel at 372km, so I had 25hrs in hand to sleep & ride the remaining 240km. My plan had been to leave the hotel, bulging with coffee and croissants, by 07:30, having had a very satisfactory 7hrs sleep. Many riders, including me, make it round 600s with just a few hours, so 7hrs would have been a real luxury. In the end I was greedy, decided that I had plenty of time and slept a couple more hours, finally leaving at 09:30, giving myself around 15hrs to complete the ride. Under the circumstances that was almost a fatal mistake.

It took many kilometres to find my legs again and the wind was solidly against me for the entire journey back to Exeter. It was hard, hard going, not helped by the lumpier terrain. I knew the wind would be bad, but hadn’t really accounted for how sapping it would be after riding all the previous day. Several times I entertained doubts about whether I could manage LEL. I’m sure I can, but I’ll need to revise my anticipated speed from Day 2 onward. As it was, I made it to Exeter with an hour to spare. Had I been less greedy for sleep (and less complacent about the effort needed for Day 2) it would have been no easier, but I’d could have relaxed a bit and simply dialled back the effort.

Food & drink

Drank the whole of my first backpack and about half of the refill. Filled up again at the hotel and drank most of the final pack on Day 2. Stopped regularly for iced coffee, fruit, lollies and beer. Solid food was still quite hard to eat – it took a couple of pints of cider to help me get through a single bag of Mini Cheddars because my mouth was so dry that they just turned to glue. Tinned fruit was a win though. I mostly ran on sugar in one form or another, and I need to get better at eating slower carbs.

Stops

I stopped when I needed to. Didn’t faff per-se, but I was probably more generous than I should have been. Some stops were very close together, but it seemed necessary, so I didn’t beat myself into riding further. There were also quite a few micro-stops by the roadside, just long enough to have a little breather and maybe eat a banananana. In total I spent 15:45 stopped, of which 10:14 was at the hotel.

Had a touch of monkey-bum by the time I finished – sore patches on my sit bones from pressure & heat. Not major, but I need to remind myself to stand up, change position and occasionally dab on sudocreme or similar. I’ve never bothered with chamois cream before and it probably wouldn’t have helped, being more useful in preventing chafing in the various stinky creases and folds of an audaxers undercarriage.

Regular messages from Baggy and various friends helped massively with morale, as did having the last half of Return of the King to listen to. The downside of having Andy Serkis reading the complete and unabridged version is that you have to listen to all of Tolkien’s bloody awful songs. Apart from being terrible (sorry Prof) Andy S can’t carry a tune in a bucket, so they’re almost comically bad.

Overall I was pleased – only my second 600 and as a bonus, my second SR. Time management is still a problem though. I’m fast on the bike, but I need to be much more disciplined about how I spend the time accumulated. Ten hours at the hotel was foolish – I really ought to have left on schedule and it was only the extra time allowed on a perm that saved me.