We awoke (at 05:00 again…) to find that the spot we had chosen was on a cliff face, overlooking Gweebarra Bay, which made for quite a majestic start to the day. Again, I was hit with the thought that we were getting to see so much of Ireland and just how impressive it is. We set off sharpish as we were quite exposed to the wind on the cliff face and getting cold. Jack was struggling with waking up again, so much that we had to take it very steady due to fear of crashing. This trend would continue for most of the race, but while I was normally relatively alert in the mornings, and would do more time on the front, I would really struggle in the evenings, and it would be Jack who would do more time on the front and keep us going longer (which while I was disgruntled at the time, in hindsight, it was really important to help keep our mileage up), so it was a harmonious relationship of sorts. This rule also applied over the whole race, with Jack finishing stronger than me as we approached the end of the race and me performing stronger at the start of the race.
After 35km, and a stop to resupply and use the bathroom (where we ran into another TAW rider who turned out to be a teacher who taught at Jack’s old school in Oxfordshire), we hit the next climb in the Mike Hall KOM Challenge series, Glengash Pass. We were able to ride most of the climb, but there were a few points which reduced us to walking. At one point on the climb, we could see the race staff up ahead taking photographs of the riders on the climb, so obviously for this segment we ignored our sore knees and put on a brave face for the cameras. Once we got to the top of the climb, we could see some rain clouds coming in and a menacing shower making its way towards us, so we got the wet gear out for the first time. We had been expecting rain over the course of the race, this was the West Coast of Ireland after all. I had spent all my childhood summers on the West Coast of Ireland in Connemara in a caravan and can confirm that it rains. A lot. While this was only a shower that lasted maybe 30 minutes, we would carry on to be extremely fortunate with the weather, and after the race was finished, we counted up the number of times we had to don our rain jackets, and there was only seven instances, with the longest lasting 30 minutes. It’s hard to express how lucky we were. The weather had been a big worry before starting the race, as the previous edition of the TAW saw Storm Hector hit the Southwest coast when most riders were in that area, and looking at the footage, photos, and reading the accounts of it, it had been brutal.
After Glengash Pass, we headed out to Malin Beg to do a loop of it, where, while we were having a quick stop and pee, a couple cycling by stopped and asked us what the story was with the Bromptons and what we were at. We explained and carried on and while we were having a snack overlooking Silver Strand, they had caught us up and offered to take a photo of Jack and me, which was the first photo of the two of us together from the race yet. We then headed to the town of Donegal, overlooking Donegal Bay with the iconic Ben Bulben in the distance and sun gloriously shining, and what followed was a series of short, sharp, and steep climbs, one after another in quick succession, and while we were walking most of them, this is when I started to feel my left knee giving me pain. I had had left knee pains on and off for years, stemming from some irregular knee cartilage, but it was starting to flare up badly at this point. We had taken all measures we could to prevent and alleviate the knee pain we knew would hit us at some point in the race, but after just two and bit days’ riding, and with upwards of seven days riding to go, I had been hoping that I could stave it off for a bit longer. My mood and morale continued to deteriorate as we rode into Donegal as I started to think about the whole ride ahead and what still need to be overcome, and with an aching knee.
This downturn continued after passing through Donegal (and feasting from a well provisioned Supervalu) and at one point, around 150km into the day, I told Jack that I just needed to stop and mentally deal with this wobbler. So we stopped beside a church and I just sat down to try an deal with the issue at hand. This is an advantage of being in a pair, that when one of you is low, the other is often high and can try to raise the spirits of the other. Jack was in a good mood at the time, but couldn’t break through my low, such that it was. I sent out an SOS message to my Mum and Amy in the hopes their responses would get me going, but unfortunately they were both out for lunch that day and didn’t get my message until later in the day, when my mood had picked up. The biggest challenge of these races isn’t so much the physical aspect of the racing, but the mental facet, which your unable to train to the same levels as required in these sort of ultra-endurance events. All our training rides helped to prepare us, but we had already gone beyond what we had done in those and now we were in uncharted territories. We had heard a quote before the race about these ultra-endurance events that was really applicable and one that helped us to stay grounded and not overthink any particular low: “If you’re feeling good, it’s going to get worse, but if you’re feeling bad, it’ll get better”. This had been on the forefront of my mind going into the race but had been forgotten over the first couple of days. It was now coming back to me and in addition, before the race I had put a little picture of the Pale Blue Dot image taken by the Voyager space mission, from which Carl Sagan described just how insignificant the human race is in the grand scheme of the cosmos. It had always calmed me when I had felt stressed, and it helped me again at that moment. This was just a bike race, nothing more. There are bigger issues in the world than my knee hurting, and that there are people in worse scenarios.
So, after this short break where all this inner resolve was primed, we made ready to get moving. I decided to take a pee, and in my moment of self-intervention, I peed against the church wall, not really thinking about how offensive it possibly was. And to my further embarrassment, at that moment the Reverend came out of his house, just beside the church, with a family and they could all see the evidence of what I had just done. So, needless to say, Jack and I made a prompt exit.
From there we approached the iconic Ben Bulben, but before we rounded it, we did a loop around the Gleniff Horseshoe which was imposing and wonderfully isolated. We were again captured by the race staff taking photos with the sublime backdrops. After this detour, we rounded Ben Bulben, riding for a bit with another TAW rider and chatting, before we rolled into Sligo town. Just before we rolled into town, we passed by WB Yeats’ grave which I stopped at briefly to see. Afterwards, we came across a SuperMacs fast food restaurant. I was still coming out of my low and a warm meal was exactly what I needed to raise me out of my stupor. Between the meal, my knee pain subsiding (likely due to some painkillers) and receiving responses from Amy and my Mum about my earlier troubles, I was soon in a good place mentally. We had only covered just over 200km at this point and it was approaching 21:00, so we were well short of our target of 300km a day. I had mentally done the arithmetic, which was quite complicated it must be said, and if we wanted to complete the 2,350km route in 10 days (our limit before our flight back to London), we needed to complete just 235km a day. So at a minimum, as long as we hit that, we would make it. Given how tired we were already feeling, and the knee pains we were experiencing, the thought of being competitive and hitting our 300km a day goal were no longer a priority. We just wanted to make it to the end of the race. So we agreed that we would ride to the minimum daily mileage of 235km this day and call it quits.
We had just left SuperMacs and were rolling through Sligo town, which was bustling with people getting ready for a sociable Saturday night (oh the envy!), we were passing by a mural of WB Yeats which I pointed out to Jack to show him who he was and as we rolled by another mural of the Leaders from the 1916 Easter Rising, a rather large man on a little moped revved up beside us and, I presume having seen me point out the WB Yeats mural, pointed to the mural with the 1916 Leaders on it and shouted “Now that’s a proper mural!” and sped off into the distance. It was quite a peculiar moment, but very entertaining. As we got a bit outside Sligo, and the sun setting, Jack had an incident where essentially his knee would ‘lock up’ and he would be in agony. It happened a few times over the course of the race and would be dubbed “Jack’s Knee Syndrome”. He was able to placate it through a series of stretches and manage to get it moving again, but quite startling as he could be fine one moment, then in agony the next. Soon after this incident we turned off the main road and found a suitable spot just beside Streamstown Beach, just shy of 235km, our daily minimum.
Distance (km): 233.82
Elevation (m): 3,232
Moving Time (hh:mm:ss): 12:46:16
Elapsed Time (hh:mm:ss): 17:36:33
Moving Time Percentage: 72.53%
Average Speed (km/h): 18.3
Calories: 5,401
Average Heart Rate (bpm): 109
Strava Link: https://www.strava.com/activities/2434934491
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