Aberdovey Bike Ride 17th June 2011

When I was rudely awoken at 5am this morning by my alarm, I looked out the window at the ever greying clouds and thought how blooming glad I was that I wasn't cycling to Aberdovey today!

The castle wheelers were doing the Wolverhampton to Aberdovey bike ride, not just to help raise more money for charity but also as a practise ride for the main End2End event. Just for today, Paul, Tris, Keith and Dave had been joined by two others-another Paul and Adrian. Meanwhile, I have been keeping warm in our support bus!

The race was 102 miles from start to finish with six checkpoints along the way. In return for the organisers making a donation to our fund, we agreed to man the first checkpoint and provide a support vehicle.

I left the lads at the Monlineux just before 7am, and headed off to Telford to help man the check point. The race began at half 7, with a police motorcycle escort out of town. There were around 300 riders in total and it didn't take long for the first few to reach me -14 miles up the road. I had the job of dishing out water and bananas! Of the wheelers, Paul came in first. He had convinced himself that he was behind the others and had been 'breaking his neck' to catch up. He set off more or less straight away, planning on taking it easy so the others could catch up. Tris, Keith and Dave arrived about five minutes after Paul had continued. They set off in pursuit, laughing to each other how Paul had stated that come the big day, he didn’t want to be left behind!! Once all 300 or so participants had cleared the first check point, I could concentrate solely on the wheelers.

The next stop was on the outskirts of Shrewsbury. Taking the short route along the motorway, I arrived a few minutes before Paul. Somewhat gobsmacked that he hadn’t been caught by the others, he set off without them once again. I believe that in his mind, he thought he would be caught up at some point, and would be holding the others back, hence him wanting to get as far ahead as possible. Eight minutes later the others rolled in. Tris and Dave were taking time to stretch out some of their recent injuries. It has been a few weeks since either of them has done a good run. Tris had a knee strain and Dave has a niggle at his Achilles. Keith had still got his coat on! He’d completed 30 or so miles and hadn’t even broken a sweat! Adrian was riding with Tris, Dave and Keith, while Paul ‘Two’ was up ahead with ‘Our’ Paul. With everyone feeling good, the four left towards checkpoint three-somewhere just over the Welsh border. This was the last point at which I saw ‘The Pauls’ until the finish line.  Even with a mini bus, I couldn’t catch them now! I kept with the remaining four; leap frogging them and keeping an eye on them, particularly Tris and Dave, bearing in mind their recent injuries.

Newtown was soon upon us, 64 miles in. 300 sausage rolls were being dished out! This was the furthest that the Castle Wheelers had even ridden as a team (Minus Paul of course, all we could see of him was the scorch marks he’d left in his wake, similar to those from Back To The Future!) They were in good spirits as they left.

The lads didn’t look tired, but at 80 miles they were definitely looking forward to the finish line! The last five miles into Aberdovey saw one hell of an evil hill, even the mini bus struggled! I arrived at the finish, 15 minutes after ‘The Pauls’. Ten minutes later, the final four crossed the line. You could see the exhaustion on their faces. They quickly got showered and changed at Aberdovey yacht club, while I packed the bikes into the bus. It took them around six and a half hours to complete the course averaging between 15-17mph-much faster than what is required for the End2End challenge. Hopefully, they will be able to manage to reduce that pace over the 12 twelve days, otherwise they will burn out very quickly!

We set back just before half four, stopping off at Welshpool for some rather splendid fish and chips!

Only three weeks now to the big event, it is very scary now how quickly it is coming round!!

This was written by John