audax: Fynyddoedd ac Anialwch Niwlog | Over the Mountains and Misty Wildernesses 400k
May 26, 2016•527 words
Prologue: It's Thursday 26th May 2016. This Saturday I'll be riding the Dros Fynyddoedd ac Anialwch Niwlog 401km audax. It's starting from Bushley, Nr,Tewkesbury, heads over to the coast then loops back again. I've been thinking about this for the last week. It is the toughest ride I've taken on. The distance grabs the attention first. 253 miles is a long ride...
...but it's the climbing involved that made me really sit up and take notice.
That's 19,180 feet or 5,846 meters of lumps on the way. Since I got the Crux in January I've been pushing around on 36/46 11/28 gears. I had been used to riding a triple on the Tricross. It's taken a while to get used to the higher gearing and not sure I really have. With that in mind I was beginning to resign myself to walking up a few hills on Saturday. That was until I saw the biggest climb at around the 145 mile mark was just under seven miles long. Something needed to change.
A bit of thinking and a couple of phone calls convinced me that I could and should make things a bit easier for myself. Today I fitted a smaller inner ring at the front and a wider range of sprockets on the back. I'm now riding with 46/34 11/32 gearing. To get an idea what that means check out the comparison chart below.
It's not a huge difference but enough perhaps across the middle gears and bottom end to make climbing the hills and finishing the ride a viable possibility. If your interested in analysing your own set up you can do so here. The weather reports are looking okay across mid Wales. 27 hours to get round within the time allowed. Alternating now between excitement and anxiety. We shall see...
The ride: With only about four hours of sleep the night before I set off from the start at around 5.15 am. I finished the ride at 2.51 am the next day. With stopping time deducted I reckon I was peddling for about 17-18 hours. The change in gearing worked. The new combination of chain rings and sprockets feels much better and is more suited to the rides I do. I rode up all the hills.
It was a stunning route. I rode much of it solo at my own pace. When I was with others the company was great. I was also very pleased to have a wheel to hang onto especially for the last thirty miles back to HQ. I was exhausted and struggling to stay awake.
One of the other riders posted this video of the ride to YouTube. Shows of the landscape and conveys the experience well.
My Garmin let me down at the end. With just 20k to the end it goes into a melt down cycling on and off till the finish. Everything logged was lost. Very disappointed about this. No files any where. Like a factory reset. I shall try and use what I can to recover the file. Not holding out much hope right now. Still at least I have the pictures to record the route.