17/07/2022 – PCR Day 8

Stuck in the middle of nowhere I double checked my tyre and wheel and thankfully the wheel was fine, the tyre was indeed dead to the world.

I was glad that the hill was done with but now had the task of getting down the rest of the hill and getting back to the guys bike shed.

Rather than wear out my cleats, I walked barefoot down the hill back to town.

It was an agonising trek, on the one hand I was annoyed about all this wasted time, on the other I was just praying that the guy had a spare tyre that I could buy off him.

Given that it was a one man band bike mechanic (a well stocked one though), it was not the same as a proper bike shop.

He was new to being a bike mechanic but certainly had a knack to it as he sorted out another competitors free hub the previous day.

After what seemed an age, I made it back to town and he was out of the house but his wife said he’d be back soon so I popped to the shop to grab some food for the morning.

Upon my return he was there and we got cracking as how to solve the problem of my rear wheel.

First problem solved, he had a spare 25mm tyre and a decent one at that, a Continental GP5000.

Sadly it wasn’t the tubeless version so we couldn’t set it up tubeless which would have prevented the second problem.

We still didn’t have an inner tube that was long enough for the wheel. We tried anyway with the 60mm tubes he had with my valve extender in and the end just poked out but not enough for my pump.

This is then when he produced one of his best ideas yet. He had a little gold coloured adapter for Presta to Schrader. If you screwed this onto the Presta inner tube, this kept it from going back into the rim, then use the Schrader method on my pump (also doable at any service station), then this meant that that the inner tube could be inflated.

I was able to pass on one rogue bit of knowledge though to aid his development as a bike mechanic which was passed onto me from the legend in the BikeDr shop in Perth Australia.

When putting in an inner tube, if it has a removable valve (as mine had to be), then if you took some tubeless sealant and injected it down the valve then in essence you were running tubeless.

The sealant would seal any (most) punctures that might occur whilst running tubes such as pinch flats or small pointy objects.

I did this for this new inner tube as I really couldn’t deal with any more mechanicals either time wise or mentally. The 2 new tyres had also cost me £100 alone.

As I sat on the bench finishing off my breakfast I had to redo some of the maths that I had planned on sticking to not 24 hours earlier, a lot had changed since then.

I had 582km to do in 47 hours in order to make the 8am ferry as it was now 9am.

Whilst this is only just over 12kmh in elapsed time, I had to find and eat food, fill up waters and sleep (if I was going to).

The other option would be to go for the 9pm ferry the night before which would be averaging 16kmh excluding time taken for all other activities that were not cycling.

If I was going for the 9pm ferry I would have to decide now and mentally get into a state to do it, it was a race after all.

I’d been doing a good job of averaging 20kmh whilst I was on the bike (it was a really hilly route) which would give me 29 hours of bike riding and 7 hours off the bike.

Having never done anywhere near that kind go distance in that kind of time (my biggest ever day is 360km) I tentatively thought I’d give it a go. I could always drop down to Plan B and take it easier.

I set off at 9:07 and had a plan to really minimise stops and be efficient.

The mornings route was stunning doing a loop of Achill Island which was quite lumpy with a few short steep hill thrown in there.

The route double backed upon part of what I cycled yesterday but then turned right and followed the peninsular down and around on the south side taking in some spectacular sights always made more fun with the risk of sheep running in front of you.

I reached Bangor Erris which was 86.5km in in 4hr05m (21kmh) of elapsed time which I was happy with and the weather was getting hot.

There was a decently sized service station with a bunch of other riders outside, 2 of which passed me going up the mountain I was walking down barefoot several hours earlier.

We had a quick chat then I headed inside to grab some food and some cold drinks.

I feasted on my new favourite servo dish, white wrap, lettuce, BBQ sauce, hash browns and wedges.

A real carb load.

After smashing that and some other snacks and refreshing sports drinks we kept chatting and discussed plans for the remainder of the ride.

They were planning on getting the 8am ferry which was definitely the sensible option and reduced the possibility of missing the party altogether rather than going too hard and blowing up.

They set off whilst I was setting all my stuff up and using the facilities at the service station and my elapsed time was now 5 hours (17.3kmh) marginally ahead of the benchmark that I needed to make the ferry tomorrow evening.

I had definitely spent too long there but had managed to stock up, relive myself and get out of the sun for a bit but I would have to be more efficient, I couldn’t have stops that long unless I planned on riding through the night and not sleep in the 36 hours I had.

I pressed on the pace a bit to catch up some time and caught up the group who was made up of Jason, Mimi and Lowri.

Jason had completed Ironmans before and was a very strong rider. Mimi was a world record holder ultra endurance runner turning her hand to ultra endurance riding at the age of 59 and Lowri was her pairs partner and was an ex Welsh Rugby Player and had completed ultra marathons amongst other amazing feats of endurance.

This would be a good group to make my way to the ferry to and we’d all help each other through and work as a team as they seemed to have a good dynamic which was easy to pick up on after just riding with them for a little bit.

They abode by the rules of no drafting which was important, only riding side by side or individually but waiting for each other at tops of hills or rest stops etc.

I rode with them for a few hours and their pace was slightly off what I needed to do to be able to make the evening ferry so made my way ahead and just got my head down.

I was following the north coast and (I know I say it a lot but I do because it is true every time) the scenery was breathtaking. This helped eat the miles up whilst I just kept peddling without a real break and getting through a whole crime/thriller audiobook.

My next proper break was in Ballina at 198.2km in 10h56m of elapsed time (18kmh elapsed) and stopped for a huge pizza which really hit the spot. It did eat up another hour of the day though which made my speed of elapsed time 16.5kmh which was marginally ahead of the required 16kmh needed for the evening ferry.

It was at this point that I had to make a choice, it was now 9pm at night, the ferry was in 24 hours and I had 384km to do. I was on target but this was going to be a big ask and at my current pace, I would have to ride through the night on the snacks that I could pick up here and most likely go without sleep.

I had to keep riding regardless as I still needed to do more distance even if I decided to take the morning ferry.

After a few minutes looking at the map and doing some more mental maths, I decided to ride on for another hour or so to a hostel, get a good nights sleep in a bed (as I hadn’t had one since I started), get up early and ride through the next night to get the 8am ferry which was still not an easy task.

It ultimately came down to the fact that whilst it was a race, I didn’t want to do anything silly to jeopardise finishing the race as that is always the most important thing.

Another hour or so in the bank and I made it to the hostel, checked in, had a shower (2nd of the trip) and washed one set of kit to be able to (hopefully) wear a clean(ish) set into the finish line.

It was a shorter day than I had in mind by my plan seemed to make sense in my head. I had done 227km leaving 355km to do tomorrow. I had reached the hostel at 10:30ish and was in bed by 11:30 so I was going to get a few good hours of sleep, set my alarm for 3:30, leave by 4.

I would have 28 hours to do 355km, this is an elapsed speed of 12.7kmh or 18 hours of 20kmh and 8 hours of breaks, tough but definitely doable despite the state of fatigue in my legs/body.

There wasn’t any food there sadly so I munched on some biscuits and popped my things on to charge and snuggled into the bed and with my alarm set, fell asleep amazingly quickly.

You can tell how seriously I was taking it as I didn’t even manage to take any photos during the entire day! So here is a photo from midnight when I was up on the hill pre tyre burst.