16/07/2022 – PCR Day 7

I was starting to have one eye on the finish and figured out that if I managed to trim down the time that I spent off the bike and woke up slightly earlier each morning then I would be able to get a ferry back over to Wales that would get me to the finish line in plenty of time for the finish party.

In that vain, I set off at 3:43 and barely got off the bike for the first few hours.

The first time was to capture the sunrise going on behind me.

The weather was truly amazing and it would have been such a different ride if it wasn’t so glorious.

As I was riding I checked the trackers and saw that I had overtaken Tamzin in the night/morning. She had stayed in a B&B and had a proper good nights recovery to set her up for the final few days to the finish.

I slowed down and let her catch up to have a riding buddy for a bit.

After 50km of riding into the day, we happened upon the first proper town, Clifden.

Tamzin rode straight through whilst I stopped at the petrol station to stock up on drinks and snacks.

Out of the town was a climb out to a peninsular where on the end of it I had a quick nap for 20 minutes. Already I was wavering on my task to minimise down time but I was determined so carried on and got my head down.

The rest of the day was filled with generally flat roads following round the outskirts of the peninsulas which was making the miles tick by.

It was approaching lunchtime and I approached the village of Leenaun 130km into the day and the only dish that the pub had that I could have was chips so my order of double chips was an easy one to make.

The afternoon was much of the same until I reached the town of Westport 50km later and I was in need of another proper meal so pulled into the town off the bike path and found a hipster restaurant that did a vegan curry.

I had a couple of snack balls whilst they made the curry which was delicious but despairingly small (I need to become better at picking bigger meals or ordering double portions). It did however provide a bit of variety into my diet.

Back on the bike path there were some diversions and the route provided was sending me into a dead end.

After a couple of minutes of scrambling round trying to find the way back onto bike path up ahead and very frustrated with myself, I carried on with even more of a motivation to keep going given the wasted time in the day so far.

I had been really good with not stopping except for meals and was able to cut down the time spent at meals swell so was actually making pretty decent progress.

The bike path that we were on however suddenly became infested with flying ants and other assortments of bugs which was driving me up the wall.

Adding to that there were sheep grids every couple of hundred meters for about an hour and as I was having to come to a complete stop as I had a feeling that if I rode over them whilst on the bike then this would cause a puncture which would be even more frustrating and cause even more wasted time than slowing down for them.

This didn’t stop them from being really annoying though.

220km into my day disaster struck. A puncture.

Due to my hands being on the handlebars for so long each day, they had lost a lot of their strength and I really struggled to get the tyre off my rear wheel.

Some local riders coming the other way stopped and helped me get the tyre off but I couldn’t find the puncture annoyingly.

To make matters worse, the spare inner tube that I had bought was a 60mm tube which works with my 88m rear tyre with a valve extender but this particular inner tube did not have a removable valve so was useless on this wheel.

After an hour or so of trying to sort it all out some fellow racers came up behind me and helped find the hole so popped on a patch and set off nearly 2 hours after I stopped.

Not 1km later and I started to feel the rear tyre slowly deflate and it appeared as though the patch wasn’t holding in all the air.

With 5km to go until the next town of Achill, I hobbled my way in stopping regularly to top up the air in the wheel and staying out of the saddle keeping my weight over the front wheel.

On my way in, a dot watcher pointed me in the direction of someone who could solve all of my issues, he ran both a bike shop and a BnB!

I carried on walking down the road and reached him and got chatting. Sadly the BnB was full (as was every single one in town) however he was more than happy to help with my predicament.

Over the course of 2 hours we tried nearly everything, his inner tubes didn’t have removable valves either, my patch wasn’t working so eventually I managed to glue a new patch (it took a couple of attempts) with proper super glue onto the existing inner tube and it managed to hold all the air in.

Thankfully the chip shop in town was open so with my heart full of gratitude for this man, I headed for some well deserved chips as it was nearing 10pm.

After 2 portions and 2 cans of Coke, I set off to the top of a mountain full of cell phone towers.

To say it is steep is an understatement. With long stretches in the high teens of % even reaching the low 20’s, at nearing midnight after a very long day my legs couldn’t make it and had to walk up parts of it.

The road was littered with sheep both in the middle of the road and covering the sites of the mountain which was certainly unnerving, concerned if they would run out in front of me (not that I was going at any sort of decent pace, I was seriously regretting my choice of a 28t cassette).

I reached the top eventually and chuffed with my effort, I made my way down feeling surprisingly good and eager to keep riding for another hour or so round the little island that is Achill.

Due to the steep gradient I was going hard on the brakes, far harder than I normally would due to it being midnight and there being sheep everywhere.

My wrists were straining to keep me from accelerating down the hill too fast and after a while I became conscious that my carbon wheels might start to overheat with the rim brakes so I pulled over to let them cool down a little bit.

Clearly I didn’t let them cool off enough as not too long after I set off again BANG.

My heart dropped as I feared the worst, that my rear wheel had exploded and the rim was broken. This had almost happened when I was in Australia when I’d worn my braking surface dangerously thin before getting a new wheel at BikeDr.

This time however, it caused a 2 inch hole in my rear tyre and inner tube. It had clearly gotten too hot and exploded. Thankfully I was going slowly so just put my foot down to come to a stop.

Stuck an over an hours walk from town and halfway up the mountain still, I pulled over to the side of the road, got out my sleeping kit and went to sleep.

There was nothing I could do here and I was certainly not going to go back to the bike shop and wake the guy up. I set my alarm to give me enough time to get back to town in time for the shops to open and then see if he could get me out of this mess!