18/07/2022 – PCR Day 9

Strangely, I woke up not to an alarm, but a very quiet dorm room.

I glanced down at my phone and squinted at the screen.

Panic ran through my body as I realised that I’d overslept my alarm.

I dashed out of bed, gathered up my charging belongings and got dressed and dashed out of the hostel.

It was a few minutes before 5am and the lost time had eaten into my buffer for the day.

The morning started slowly on tired legs and tired mind. I was going to go with the approach of ride long not fast, just keep plodding along as I had 355km to do.

The route took me through fields and intermittently hugging coastal roads.

Once again watching the sun rise in front of me makes everything a little bit better.

I rolled through the town of Sligo after 60km but sadly everything was closed still which perhaps was a good thing to keep me moving, but after a couple of days of sparsely populated riding, I needed to stock up on some more calories.

Thankfully, 38km later, I hit a crossroads in Grange and as I glanced to the right and saw supermarket, just what I needed.

4 hours in and my first non pee stop break.

Conscious about time, I dashed in, got my go to hash brown and wedges wrap amongst some energy drinks and sugary snacks, I sat outside shoving as much of it down my face as I could in as little time as possible.

When I had arrived, it was 9 o’clock, I had done 88km in 4 hours so was doing a decent pace of 22kmh in elapsed time, 267km to go with 23 hours to go, seemingly an attainable task, my confidence was running high.

My break had been 30 minutes which I was happy with given how much I had bought and eaten, especially picking up some Monster Ultra to guzzle down my neck to get me buzzing for the next few hours.

Right out of the blocks, I headed towards one of the biggest climbs of the day. Thankfully the route left to do was very flat, but this was one of the exceptions.

The temperature was slowly starting to build and it was getting quite warm by the time I reached the base of the climb.

It was only 200 or so meters up but it didn’t matter as the scenery was so stunning you just forgot about it.

We entered into a little valley and essentially performed a U turn around Glennif Horseshoe coming almost back on ourselves.

With the first of 3 climbs done, I headed back to the coast with the next town of Bundoran in my sights for another big snack.

The coastal road was nice and definitely scenic on this sunny morning and I got to the service station, smashed some food in 10 minutes and left being 6h 36m and 124km into the day, I was bang on track.

The day was getting on and I kept plodding on. As I glided past lakes and fields, I realised that I was coming towards the end of my journey and trip and I couldn’t be happier.

I’d enjoyed myself more than I thought I would and was proud of the effort that I had put in. I had gotten over the fact that I wouldn’t make the ferry on the Monday night but realistically that was out of the window since the issues with the rear wheel.

I reached Belcoo after 160km in 8h 50m which I was happy with and popped into a shop to grab some things and was surprised when the prices were back in familiar Sterling. It turns out that I had been cycling in Northern Ireland for a while now and hadn’t actually realised.

Some more snacks and my new favourite Vegan snack, their take on the Kinder Bueno White!

My only regret (like the sausage rolls back in Sneem) was that I didn’t buy more!

The heat was really starting to beat down and take its toll so I stocked up on water and headed off for the next stint.

What I didn’t realise was that ahead of me lay the 2 biggest climbs of the day during the peak afternoon heat and 56km until the next sign of civilisation.

The route up the first hill was really rural and was more of a back country lane than anything else and upon the top of the second climb, I was flagging.

I was out of water and low on food when suddenly, I reached what seemed to be a closed road due to road works.

After speaking to one of the guys they said that they were laying some new tarmac and would let me through when there was a gap.

It was nice to have a bit of a rest but there was no shade anywhere on the road so as I slowly dehydrated to a prune like state my shoes were also melting slightly.

The new tarmac had heated to such a temperature that some of the rubber on the sole of my shoe had melted.

Eventually the foreman said to follow one of their vehicles down the new road so I pushed off and noticed that some bits of the new tarmac were sticking to my tyres.

This was my worst nightmare as what if this caused a puncture? Or worse, ripped the tyre or stuck to the tyre and damaged my frame by either scratching it or causing a crack.

As I steadily made my way down the scorching freshly laid tarmac it eventually levelled out and transitioned onto ore hardened road and I got back up to speed.

Not long after, a rider coming the other way waved me down and came over for a chat.

He lived locally and let me know of a trail angel just a few minutes down the road who was filling up riders waters as the next town with a shop (if you wanted to stay on the route) was over an hours ride away.

I thanked him and headed off along some backroads which took me by some lakes with some very tempting pontoons on that given the heat, made me want to dive straight off of.

Given the time pressures that I still felt I was under, I decided that I would just carry on but in hindsight, it would have been unbelievably refreshing.

Not too long after, I came upon the aforementioned trail angel and popped inside to fill up the bottles with fresh water with added ice cubes at no extra cost.

After a quick chat the road was calling and I set a mission to make good time to the next town as I was starting to get quite hungry and needed fuelling for the night.

Nice country lanes brought me to the town of Carrigallen having completed 217km in 13:25 of elapsed time which on a solo day ride would be a very slow pace but I felt good about my pacing of the day, nice and steady.

The town did indeed have a mini supermarket so popped in, stocked up (sadly their hot food counter was closed so no hash brown and wedges wrap for me) and even got a free bottle of water from the store manager.

Now having enough snacks to get me through to Dublin, I wanted some hot food so glided down the road to the village pub where, upon speaking to the chef directly (due to lack of vegan options), I was made a special order of pasta, vegetables and tomato sauce with a side of chips (of course).

Again, I should have ordered 2, if I hadn’t have learned this by now, I was never going to, but it was really tasty and was able to charge up my phone to last me the whole way to the finish.

Once finished, I checked the tracker and saw that my buddies from yesterday were just down the road so I settled the tab and freewheeled back to the shop just as they turned the corner.

We stopped for a chat whilst they all popped in for food and predominantly ice cream and then we turned to tactics.

Option 1: Ride late into the night, pull over to sleep for a couple of hours and then head on to the ferry.

Option 2: Ride straight through the night.

I was more inclined for Option 2 despite having never ridden through the night before but for me, the risk averse option was to go straight through, not risk going to sleep, using up all the buffer time (that was if I woke up to my alarm on time) and miss the ferry if there was some kind of mechanical or issue.

We set off fully stocked up for what would be 140km of riding with the ferry in just shy of 12 hours, a hopefully attainable task in part due to a decent pace in the day however, unsure how my legs and mind would hold up overnight there was a slight doubt in my sheer confidence that I could power through.

Not too long after we set off, I suddenly realised that my front derailleur wasn’t working.

This was something that I was almost expecting to be honest. I hadn’t brought my Di2 charger for my gears as I thought that I’d be able to get round on one charge.

It had been in the back of my mind that it might run out and when the front derailleur stops working, that means that you’re down to 10%.

It was going to be a pain to be just limited to the little ring but better that it happened now than earlier in the ride but I was going to have to be very conservative with my gear changes for the rest of the ride.

We rode 2×2 as we set off and got to chatting, reminiscing about how our trips had been. It’s surprising how varied everyones adventure was despite all of us doing the exact route in the same period.

It was nice to find out more about them and how they’d gotten here as they all had amazing stories.

Possibly most of note was Mimi Anderson and Lowri Morgan, Mimi is a world record holder in ultra endurance running and transitioned over to cycling. Lowri is an former international rugby player and having dived to the Titanic, completed ultra marathons in the Amazon and the Sahara and the two of them met during ultra running races and have now paired up for cycling adventures.

It was eye opening the varied types of careers you can have, do what you love and spend your life as one big adventure.

One of the other benefits was that the time passed a lot faster.

Suddenly the sun had gone down and the stars were shining bright. During the race the moon had been shining bright and about now it was just past a full moon so was giving us plenty of light.

I was starting to really flag just after midnight so smashed my emergency red bull which kept me buzzing for about 2 hours and then the tiredness came back almost all at once. Eyes wanting to close, starting to see double and loss of concentration.

Jason also wasn’t feeling great so we let the girls power on whilst we pulled over for a quick nap on the side of the road.

A very quick 10 minutes later we got back on the saddle and lasted about an hour or so before we repeated the procedure, this time, being woken by a van driver asking if we were alright.

In hindsight, seeing 2 cyclists at 3am lying on the grass verge on the side of the road must have been quite the sight.

Soon we made our way through a business park, then housing estates as the sun started to rise, we had made it to Dublin.

Time was really dragging now but we wherein track to be there several hours before departure which was amazing news.

Through the entry to the ferry port we went and slumped outside the petrol station willing the energy to pick ourselves up and grab some snacks.

After another famous wrap and some drinks, we sat outside and had a well deserved relax, some more than others.

That was it, we had made it to the ferry in plenty of time.

Other people joined us as we then made our way to board. I couldn’t wait to get on board and have a proper nap to then finish the race strong and have a party.