12/07/2022 – PCR Day 3

The early alarm woke me straight away, I’ve used the same alarm sound for years and in years gone by, missing my alarm would mean being late for a 6am rowing session which was bad, but now, it would mean potentially losing hours in the race.

I was really tired, I could have slept through till midday but the clock was ticking and I wanted to make the finish party in 7 days time.

It is quite hard to set a target that far in advance so I tried to keep to my schedule of 12 hours of cycling a day and hope that the distance came with it.

A couple of hundred meters after I set off I encountered one of the race team warning me of the road closure and the diversion onto the main road.

After a quick chat and being told that the rider was doing fine in the hospital with just a couple of broken bones, I set off in the breaking dawn of 4:30am.

The main road was nice and quick into Skibbereen and I was met with some quiet roads to get me started in the day.

Whilst the weather was taking a slight turn for the worse, my mood certainly wasn’t. That was until the road veered off to the left and took some real rural lanes. Steep ascents and twisty technical descents, potholes and gravel littered the road as splatters of rain dampened the road.

Not to worry, not too long after it started, we joined a more substantial road again only to be met with the start to route to Check Point 1 (CP1).

CP1 was at the top of a mountain 250m above where the route started. This is by no means the biggest climb in the world but it was very steep and at 6am, was not what the doctor ordered.

Thankfully I had company. I joined a rider on the approach to the climb and between deep lungfuls of air, we made nice conversation to make the time fly by.

Eventually, we made the top and there was some of there PCR team there to greet us.

I gathered myself, filled up my water bottles and tyres with a track pump and made the descent down waving a hand in gesture at the riders who were now making their own way up.

Not too long afterwards, I was riding along desperately hungry due to lack of snacks when I realised that my tyres felt a little bouncy.

I pulled over and both of them were about half flat despite just pumping them up to near 100PSI near minutes earlier.

Panicking as I only had 1 inner tube, I pumped them both up with my hand pump, spun them round hoping that the tubeless sealant would seal any holes that might have appeared and prayed that this wasn’t happening to me in the middle of nowhere at this hour.

Thankfully, all was fine after another top up but I still had 2 issues. I was lacking food and my Dynamo hub hadn’t been connected up properly so my power bank was flat. The rough riding the previous day had caused a connection to come loose and I hadn’t realised until far too late.

I made it to the next town where I was able to stock up on snacks, Monster Ultra and Hash Browns although perhaps spent a little too long here and should have eaten on the road, a lesson for next time.

With my battery dying, I carried on and made it to the next village of Kilcrohane at the bottom of Goats Pass where I found a general store, asked them very nicely to charge up my Wahoo whilst I sat outside.

My Wahoo was on 2% and my phone on 9%. The phone being low wasn’t the end of the world as I could listen to downloaded playlists on Spotify for almost no battery usage.

After half an hour or so (wasted time in the race, I know, but it had to be done), I was now seriously behind schedule.

I met Dougless going up the hill and we chatted as we went past another rider who was sadly dealing with a puncture. We parted ways on the descent and the road took me into a town called Bantry where I stopped for some food where some other riders were.

Crucially this was somewhere else where I could charge up my Wahoo.

The vegan breakfast they offered was nice although I probably made the mistake (again) of ordering too little to justify the stop.

Heading out into what would be the biggest climb of the day, priests leap, I was feeling okay, stomach was full-ish, Wahoo had a decent charge.

What I was not prepared for was the steepness and poor road quality of the climb, the views were stunning which did make it worth it in the end and to be honest, the descent was harder than the ascent.

Clenching at the breaks to make sure I didn’t go too quickly and crash into a pothole and puncture, or worse.

The reward, however, was still to come. We made our way back towards where we came but instead we were faced with a near alpine style climb and descent. Swooping smooth roads overlooking gorgeous scenery was just what the doctor ordered.

As was the restaurant at the bottom where I saw Dougless again and a few other riders.

I then heard about someone called Tamzin who was celebrating her birthday today was just up the road and thought “is this something that I’d want to do on my birthday? Yes, actually I probably would”.

A quick pasta with tomato sauce down the hatch and I headed back onto the road.

A little while later I bumped into her and got chatting, turns out that she was the recipient of the Ultra Distance Scholarship

“This scholarship was created to elevate representation in the discipline of Ultra Distance racing and to amplify conversations around the lack of diversity in the cycling world at large and hopefully inspire others in the industry to take initiative.”

I can certainly confirm that there were far more men than women who were partaking in this race and the overwhelming majority (of which I was one) were white so I’m so happy that there are things like this in place to help promote diversity.

There was still more climbing to do and as I made my way to the last big town before the wilderness, a local out on his normal bike ride rode with me into town.

It was nice that dot watchers were watching how we were getting on and engaging in the race, he directed me to the local fast food pizza place but sadly it had milk in the base so had to settle with double chips in the burger place next door.

On the way out I bumped into Tamzin again who was eating her birthday cake and we discussed plans for the next section of the course.

We were about to head into a real doozy of a climbing section, it was still light and with a lot of climbing to do, you didn’t want to do to much and burn some matches but also you wanted to make it through and to CP2 the following evening.

In the end I decided to go over 2 climbs then sleep in the following valley wherever I saw somewhere suitable to bivvy up.

The route was stunning as per usual but the climbing was taking its toll so after the 2 climbs which I managed to meet some other riders on the way up, I found an abandoned stone house to sleep in and after 12 hours, 225km and 3,500m of climbing, I lay my head to the ground and fell straight asleep.