The South Downs Way record attempt and the St Ives National B race win

The South Downs way:

160km, around 3,500 meters of climbing and virtually all off road. I wasn’t quite sure what I was signing up to when we came up with the idea of giving the record a crack last September. But fast forward 11 months and here we are and now I can officially say that was one of the hardest things I have ever done in the bike. 7 hours 40 of just giving it full gas pushing my limit, it’s actually one of the longest periods of time I have ever ridden and by far the furthest I have ever ridden on my cross bike, but what a challenge and good time I had.

Running from Eastbourne to Winchester, the route has been used for approximately the last 8000 years, although the route has obviously seen a few slight changes over the years, the most substantial change being around Old Winchester hill. ‘The original route’ runs down off Beacon hill and through Exton and on the road up Old Winchester hill, however after a disagreement over the land the route was slightly changed and has been made slightly longer and what I would say harder as now takes on Old Winchester hill off road, hitting one of the steepest sections of the whole entire route. This is the way I would be taking on as the old route is actually now a footpath from what I believe.

It’s been a challenge I have wanted to do for quite some time and the original plan was to have a go at it last September, but with my race schedule that was never possible and with the weather the last couple of weeks being so dry it was sort of a now or never sort of challenge.

The date was set, Tuesday the 27th July 2021.

4AM that morning the alarm went off, only a few hours earlier I was awoken by the sound of the rain pounding against the windows but by the time we set it was dry at least, even if many of the roads were engulfed by pretty large puddles.

Winchester cathedral marks the start of the trail, which turns out is pretty quiet at 6AM, but that’s just what I wanted. The plan was to leave as early as possible, this meant I would hopefully cover at least the first few hours without coming across too many people who I would have to slow down for, making it easier for me to pick my lines and get into a pretty solid rhythm.

I would be taking on the challenge on my cross bike, the Ridley X Night disc, rolling on a set of EFS 45mm carbon disc wheels fitted with a pair of 38mm Vittoria Terreno Dry tyres. Although most chose a hard tail mountain bike for this route I was hoping the cross bike would allow me to carry a lot more speed over the flatter, faster sections as well being lighter which would play advantage on the many many climbs.

I have also been given a Discount code by the people at EFS if you would like to get your hands on your own pair of carbon wheels for under £500 use the code TOMC10 for 10% off their whole website.

The first two hours absolutely flew by and things were looking really promising, I actually took the KOM over the first 40 kilometres and was feeling strong. The plan was to meet a support car with Poppy, Simon, Abby and Scot in who would help shout encouragement and pass up food and liquids and be there in case anything went wrong. After passing them at Old Winchester hill for the first time I pushed on until South Harting which was exactly 2 hours into the ride. Here I stopped for my first water refill, as well as topping up the pockets with Rawvelo energy bars and also gave the chain a quick spray as was a lot wetter than expected out on the tracks.

Feeding wise I aimed to try and hit 100 grams of carbohydrates an hour, this came in the form of two large energy bars that I had made from my book Natural Energy (the peanut butter and jelly flavour) as well as one Rawvelo peanut butter energy bar, that would hopefully keep my engine topped up with lots of energy. As the ride progressed I did start to change my eating habits slightly, at the half way point I grabbed a small savoury turkey sandwich to break up the sweetness of all the bars before I started to progress onto food as well as energy powder that would provide me with energy a lot quicker and opted for for three gels over the last hour and a half as well as breaking my bars up into much smaller chunks as by this point I was starting to struggle with keeping on top of the eating. The Rawvelo Blueberry and Hibiscus caffeine gels really came into their own then, providing both my body and mind with the energy needed to make it to the finish.

After South Harting the route dips and dives over to Cocking before one of the fastest sections all the way to Amberly which marks the half way point of the route. This is where I was really hoping the cross bike would come into its own, with the deep section carbon wheels I would be able to carry a lot more speed than the conventional mountain bike and hopefully make up some time before the big climbs and descents that litter the final 80km. However things didn’t quite go to plan, with the rain from that nights storm creating a slick, slippery film over the top of the grass I unfortunately hit the deck pretty hard off of the descent, luckily it was more of a slide but still it was a few minutes lost trying to straighten out my handle bars, shifters and untangle my chain. I soon got going again and the momentum picked up before I hit my next problem, a front wheel puncture. A puncture at some point was pretty inevitable so was a scenario I had prepared for and soon had a can of sealant on the valve hoping to try to fix it, unfortunately for me the slit was just slightly too big to seal and so I went about trying to put in a new tyre, at the same time I had Poppy on the phone, working out if they were nearby and decided I would run the kilometre down the hill to meet them at the road where we would change the front wheel. Just under 10 minutes later and I had a new front wheel and was back off again with just under 100 kilometres remaining.

Bombing along the top of the downs I soon ran into more problems, another puncture just this time on the rear and in the middle of no where. I had actually ridden all of the sections of the Way over the last few months so knew where I had to be most cautious, where I could push on and what way to turn out the junctions, however this puncture was right on a long grassy single track where again a piece of flint had just flicked up and slit the tyre once again and with the sealant not doing a great job at sealing it out came a tube and tyre levers.

Soon I hit Amberly, the next point at which I would meet my support crew, exactly 3 hours 45 after setting off from Winchester, I had a few minutes to make up over the next 80km if I wanted to break the 7 hours 25 record along the new route but was looking doable if I wasn’t to have any more problems. A quick rear wheel change and I was off again, hitting a few of the highest points of the way my heart sank as I looked to the right and saw the rain starting to blow in off of the sea and onto the downs. As the visibility came down to around 50 meters I pushed on, it was quite nice and cooling but made for some very tricky descending and far more caution had to be taken. The only positive was that I didn’t actually see anyone else for a good 15 to 20 kilometre. Luckily it wasn’t long before the clouds started to part again and things started to pick up.

The next 80km were a whirlwind, I have never actually ridden for that length of time before so I was a little nervous about how I would cope but honestly the time flew by. The fact I was just inside the time needed to get the record with an hour to go gave some much needed extra motivation and up the final few climbs I gave it everything I had. But things were just not meant to be, a 5th puncture with 3km threw all hope out of the window and by the time I had rolled down off of the hill and into Eastbourne I was just outside of the record by a little over 10 minutes.

This has been a challenge I have been working towards and planning for such a long time I have to say I was pretty let down to come so close yet so far away. Maybe I will have to give it another attempt some time and with the things learnt from this first attempt I can hopefully improve and go even faster. A massive thank you to everyone for all of their support, including everyone who donated and helped me raise some money for Ride For Charlie, plus obviously Simon, Poppy, Scot and Abby for coming out and helping on the day, I certainly wouldn’t have even made it to the end without your help!

ST Ives Road Race

Two days prior to my attempt to the South Downs Way I was at the St Ives Road Race in Cambridgeshire. With 5 other team mates and a flattish, fast circuit it was looking like a circuit that would suit us pretty well. The standard pre race banana and rice combo for lunch and it was soon 14:30 and time for the race to roll out.

145km around an approximately 12km circuit, meant that we soon got dizzy, but also soon got to know the course pretty well. With not too many characteristics that would be particularly decisive, basically there were no really strong cross winds or steep, long climbs that would have the potential to split the race to pieces I focused keeping tucked in and feeding over the first hour, trying to ride into the race and wake up the legs before trying to do something later on.

Things were not quite that simple, approximately half way through the race a large break went up the road and soon built up a pretty healthy lead, fortunately we had one team mate up the road in that break, however being such a large break and him being outnumbered by many other teams we had a difficult decision to make. Soon we had a team trial going on the front of the peloton trying to bring the break back, or at least the gap not becoming massive. The laps went by and the front group started to get gradually smaller with riders being dropped every lap around, unfortunately for us we could also see our team mate up the road.

Photo by Ollie Maynard

With the gap continuing to grow, I gave it a go at trying to bridge the gap, luckily for me 4 riders joined me, including Clay, one of my team mates. A simple but effective through and off for the next 3 laps saw us bringing the gap down and down, from a minute and a half to a minute, to forty seconds to twenty seconds. We perfected the catch, just latching onto the break with 11km to go. Giving us plenty of time to try and recover before the sprint to the finish. I decided not to go down that route and instead gambled and went for it with 10 kilometres to go, it was a risky move as no one followed and with many teams having a few riders in the break I was scared they would soon hunt me down. Head down I just went for it, giving it my full commitment. The gap never went out to more than 15 to 20 seconds and with the last 5 kilometres being mostly a long, gentle incline into a pretty horrible headwind the chasing bunch definitely had the upper hand. 4 kilometres to go soon turned into 2 before that turned into 1, I was still dangling out there like a carrot for the break, the seconds ticked by each pedal stroke sending shocks of pain through my whole entire body, I tried to get out of the saddle inside the last 500 metres but the legs were completely empty and instead just put my head down and gave it my all.

10 meters was the advantage I had, crossing the line to get my First Nation B win, a massive thank you to all of the Spirit lads for their help that race as well as Russ for keeping the whole team kicking over. And of course a massive thank you to pedal potential for the continued support this year.