A day in the life of an Ironman Triathlete: First Ever 200 km Ride
Last Saturday was by far my longest and toughest day on the bike so far. Several weeks before one of my training partners, (Dai) sent me a couple of potential routes for me to pick not long after I told him I had never done a 200 km ride before, as I said I'd quite like to do one before I head back home to Cambridge.
The logical option was to pick the one that was the most scenic, which however had the most climbing and would take me the furthest out of my comfort zone being from the pan flat lands of Cambridge. This route would take us north into Snowdonia, through the national park there, deep into the mountains of North Wales.
Snowdonia National Park
After rolling out of bed at around 430 AM and bowing my head to say a few prayers for the day and for our safety on the road today, I plodded into the kitchen to get breakfast on. I went for my usual pre race/massive workout meal. A big bowl of rice pudding, (short grain rice, water, soy milk, sugar...all boiled up together). After I left that to simmer I put my kit on. You never know what the weather is going to be like in Wales, so I went all out, base layers, over shoes, waterproof gloves etc. I filled my water bottles up, which consisted of 2x 800ml of water, 1x 800ml of flat coke (the endurance athlete's best friend), 1x 500ml of SIS carbohydrate solution.
I headed back into the kitchen to find that the bottom of the rice pudding had burnt itself to the pan...bad start. The rest of it was okay to eat but tasted fowl. So after I had a few spoon fulls I just binned it, and settled for several bananas.
After stuffing my pockets and top tube bag with assorted energy gels, mars bars, more bananas and what not I switched on my Garmin and lights and headed out to rendezvous with Dai for 6 AM. Dai appeared around 610 AM, and we headed out.
After getting over our first relatively small climb we were met with this absolutely stunning view of the town of Borth below engulfed in cloud. The mountains in the distance on the horizon are the start of the mountains of Snowdonia, where we were headed.
As you can see from the elevation profile of the ride, there isn't much flat, and two major mountain climbs.
Beyond the low lying cloud we reached Machynlleth at the base of Snowdonia, the last of any real civilization for at least 4 hours. After pausing shortly to take on fuel we began to climb into Snowdonia. At this point, any general angst, I had about this ride had pretty much left me, I was in good company and re-found the faith in my legs, put all my trust into the Lord as to how we would fair on this ride.
57 km flew by, stopped for a bathroom break, gotta keep those fluids ticking over to keep those kidneys happy.
We had been blessed with good weather for the whole day, light winds, mostly sunny, but a lil chilly. Got warm on the climbs, but apart from not there was nothing to complain about weather wise.
Just before the 100 km mark, we approach a damn with a ton of hairpins up it. A pretty decent looking climb, Dai said this would be one of our hardest climbs of the day. And not really part of our route, we were just doing it for the view at the top, and just because we could. I felt amazing at this point, so I hammered it the whole way up to the top where I waited for Dai, put down probably an average of 300 to 350W up the hairpins.
The pain up these hairpins was worth it, this photo doesn't do what we saw justice. We could see the road we took here going all the way into the horizon.
100 (ish) km in, morale was good.
Descended out and away from the damn, and cracked on. Beyond the 110 km we were in the middle of nowhere. You'd look around and there was just nothing. Not a place where you'd want a major mechanical issue. But thankfully we had non. Dai had some nasty cramps at this point, but after some salt and more bananas he was good to go, top lad.
Middle o' nowhere.
Not gunna lie, between here and were we stopped to take on some solid food was a bit of a blur. However I remember after the last mountain climb feeling really good, Dai started to slow up a bit so I took as much wind on the front as possible to save his legs a bit.
After riding just over 200 km and almost climbing the equivalent of half of Everest I felt physically alright. But my brain was completely ZONKED.
But thankfully I was well taken care of by a certain someone. ^__^
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Your posts feel like they would be more effective as a series: "Becoming an Iron Man: first ever 200km ride" or something like that. Helps put it all in context. It is something people have heard of but probably don't know too much about.
And for a post like this a really beautiful image to draw them in would work well as the first image. Whilst the elevation profile is really interesting it isn't visual enough. Just google Snowdonia and take your pick, but make sure to quote source at bottom of post.
If you do decide to do a series it wouldn't be a bad idea to do an introductory post for the series which can be referenced in all future posts about this subject.