01/07/2023 – PCR2023 – Day 0

I decided as soon as I finished last years race that I wanted to do it again. So here I am. The actual journey to the start of the race starts a few days earlier where on Thursday the 29th of June, I hop on a train from Cardiff with my bike and kit to Bristol for a job interview.

Straight from the interview I get on the train back to my school for a reunion. Then I cycle back to my parents house where I get some more food in and rest up for the night.

The Friday is spent working for most of the day whilst mentally running through all the kit that I had packed (or failed to pack). I closed my laptop mid afternoon and hopped on the train down to Portsmouth planning out my next few days.

I had spent very little time actually planning the race, I took the routes from the organisers, popped them on my Garmin and that was about it. People had said that France was flat and Wales was hilly so that was all I had to go off but regardless, I was looking forward to it.

I find that not knowing how the route was going to be was quite exciting, I’d be forced to try and figure things out on the fly rather than trying to stick to a meticulously planned schedule which would probably end up going wrong.

I met up with some riders that I knew on the ferry so we had a chat over force feeding ourselves as much carbs from the canteen as we could manage. I manage to share a room with one of the riders as I hadn’t booked myself into a cabin as they were quite expensive but when it came to it I was happy to pay half.

The crossing was pretty smooth and I slept like a log before the tragic musical notes (if you can call them that) made their way through the speakers in all of the cabins.

A quick shower and I was into my kit and ready for Day 0 of the PCR2023.

For those of you who might not be aware, the Pan Celtic Race is a self supported bike race around some of the Celtic Nations (Scotland, Wales, Ireland, Brittany, Cornwall and the Isle of Man) and the route (and countries the route is in) changes every year.

This year it was approximately 900 miles around Brittany, ferry over to Portsmouth and then a race up to Llandudno in North Wales with a loop of the great Orme to finish it off.

The start was in the lovely town of St Malo on the northern coast of France so we disembarked from the ferry and rode a couple of kilometres to the campsite where HQ for the start was.

It was a fairly miserable morning with a haze of rain falling consistently never allowing you to stay warm or dry.

Shelter was hard to come by in the campsite so a few of us decided to make the most of it and ride into town and see the sights.

We headed up onto the walls of the old city for a scope over the English Channel or “La Manche” as the French call it. A quick cafe break before some more exploring then led us to an Indian street food restaurant which thankfully did some good vegan options (selfishly my primary reason for suggesting it).

Some other riders said that they had gone down onto the beach for a quick dip so we went to see them and catch up with them before heading back to HQ for race sign on.

What had now become a substantial queue meant that we were in for a long wait before one of my friends called into the queue pretty close to the front and managed to seamlessly integrate myself to save about an hour of queuing.

During sign on I was asked “You’ve done this before haven’t you” by one of the guys at sign on, feeling good that I had been recognised I said “Yes I have”. My present, as a result of this, was being handed a gold plaque saying “Pan Celtic Magnum Opus Qualifier”.

What I had earned was an entry into an as of yet undecided mega race for next year. Whilst each year has had a short(er) route of about 1,600km and a long route of about 2,100km, there was going to be a “Magnum Opus” distance course of about 4,000km. All of the details were very hush hush and being passed around by rumours with none of them all matching up.

Safe to say we would find out about it in a couple of months time and I hadn’t actually qualified yet, I would have to finish this years race to qualify.

I collected the other treasures that everyone got on sign on like a musette, some gels, a new hat and t shirt and then did the social rounds of chatting to everyone I recognised from last year.

I was having a slight issue with one of my pedals in that it wasn’t spinning round properly. There was a mechanic at the start and he didn’t have the right tool to give them a service so I popped to the nearest bike shop.

Annoyingly they weren’t able to service them either so I decided to buy a new set of pedals, which, given that I was currently using the Look pedal system, (French) I’d surely be able to find a set that matched. They had a whole stand of Look products, none of which were in stock meaning that I had to swap over to the Shimano system including new cleats.

Next stop was checking into the hotel, popping to the supermarket to stock up on food for breakfast and for the first day before heading back to the old town to an Italian restaurant for double pizza.

After a fun evening we wrapped it up and headed back to the hotel for an early night. We had an early alarm for the race.