Wicklow 200

I awoke on Sunday morning at 5:20am to the immediate thought 'why am I doing this?'. As I drove through town watching as people were still struggling home, I kinda wished I was one of them and not on my to do 200km of pain into black clouds. Looking around at the hugely diverse crowd, I could only laugh. There were the shiny leggeded pro types, the fat-10 grand bikes types and of course, the goobers. It was like a goober world gathering. Thousands of them is no exageration! After signing on and meeting up with the guys from MAD, we rolled out at 7:20 and began the route which took us through Eniskerry before going up the Sally Gap, Wicklow Gap, Donard, Rathdrum and a load of other places before returning to UCD. I stuck with Paddy and Oisin for the first couple of hours while we were feeling strong and passing loads of people. At the first stop (90KM), I re-grouped with Oisin and split with Paddy and continued on trying to stay in as many roadie packs as possible. It was a cool feeling being dragged along at 30km/h for ages while barely doing any work. All the details are a bit fuzzy for reasons I will explain later but I hit Slieve Maan by mysef and struggled up it (although I did a fair bit better than the roadies. They're not the best at climbing for the most part it would seem!) A quick gel and some drink at the top and I met Luke from Trinity Tri Club. I was really glad of the company and he kept me upbeat while we climbed Shay Elliot. I barely noticed this climb go by thanks to the company! We managed to latch onto a group of complete savages for the guts of 30KM to bring us to the last feed station in Rathdrum. We picked up Oisin who had stopped for a puncture and continued on into a headwind to finish out the last 60KM. We were about 5.5hours in at this point. Within five minutes of leaving Rathdrum, I knew I was spent. I couldn't even spin on the flats and my stomach started cramping up really badly. Oisin and Luke were a fair bit ahead in no time and latched onto a slow group thinking that I would catch up but it was not to be.

The next 60km were an absolute nightmare. The stomach cramps continued and got worse and worse. A small pull I had on my left knee earlier started to become really painfull and I was by myself with a horrible head wind bearing down on me. It must have been 40miuntes before Paddy and a large, quick group caught up to me and I stuck on the back. I gave it everything and kept with them for about 15KM before my stomach pains became too bad and I had to drop off. I met a sound mountain biker ar Balliastoe that rode with me for a while and kept my spirits up- thanks man! All the little rolling hills that I was powering up earlier in the day seemed like Everest now. The final 30kms are a complete blur of pain and suffering but I finally made it back to UCD in a little over 8hours. To say I was shattered is an understatement. I have never felt so drained and stiff in my life. If was such a relief to be finished but not so much in an achievement kind of way. More of a, I'm so happy that pain is over.

Would I do it again? I really don't know. I enjoyed flying along in huge packs and had some great chats with complete strangers about how painful the whole thing was. However, there was a lot of really boring hours, even before I bonked. Too many in fact. Also, although there were lots of nice guys riding, there were some absolute assholes. I know its a generalisation but a lot of roadies seem stuck up themselves. I got in a fight with some goober over pelethon ethitic for example and seriously considerd pushing him off the road and there were a lot of guys that were too 'PRO' to say hello. I never thought about the event until the night before which was probably a bad idea. My longest distance on road had been 90km before yesterday! I never even bothered buying energy gels or bars which was fool hardy of me and backfired. I woke up as stiff as a board after 9 hours sleep this morning and that pull on my leg is really sore now which is really bad. I had the same injury last year and it took an age to heal so I really hope I'll be feeling strong for the MAD nps on Sunday. I'm really glad I completed but I think I'll do a monster mtb spin next year instead. Much more fun! :-D