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  • Writer's pictureMark Donnelly-Orr

TransAtlanticWay Race 2019 - Sixth Preparation Ride - London to Holyhead

Updated: Mar 14, 2020

Coming up to Easter, I had been planning to go home to Dublin for a friends’ wedding. My parents decided to drive over as well (they live in Brussels), but a week earlier, so I started to think about taking some extra leave so that I’d be back in Dublin to see them. Then I started thinking about the journey back… Jack and I had been planning on attempting out an all-nighter ride consisting of a single massive ride. We thought it would be good for us mentally to have ridden a distance that was greater than what we hoped to be riding every day during the TAW, it’s always nice to think “I’ve cycled further than this” when you’ve already cycled a big distance. If it also incorporated an all-nighter, then that would also be a helpful experience, as we would be cycling late into nights, and getting up early, and there was a chance that we may pull an all-nighter in the TAW, depending on circumstances. So, I thought I would cycle home! Given Mum and Dad were going to be driving over and back, I could offload the gear I needed for the week and for the wedding onto them and then I could just carry the cycling gear I needed for the ride back, and then they could drop the Brompton back on their drive back, while I flew back later on. It couldn’t have worked out any better logistically! The plan was to ride to Holyhead in Wales where I would get ferry to Dublin. The distance was a whopping 430km, which was 145km further than the biggest ride I had ever done, which had been on a normal road bike. Daunting to say the least.


Jack had intended to do the whole route to Holyhead and then get a train back to London, but it didn’t work out logistically, so the plan was for him to join for 200km of the route, before just turning around and cycling back to London. We decided to set off after work in the hopes that we would be fresher going into the night and it wouldn't be as grim as we were expecting it to be. So off we set (with the factory giving us a send-off as there had just been an All-Hands meeting, so everyone was outside our factory enjoying some drinks in the sunshine) and it was the most nervous I had been about a ride for a long time, just the sheer distance to be ridden was intimidating, and through the night as well. I had also been told about the “circadian low”, a period from 2am-4am where your body is literally trying to do everything to get you to sleep. The ride up till around 9pm was largely uneventful, expect at one point around sunset I asked Jack how far we’d gone (as I prefer to just have my route on my cycling computer with no data to overthink about), thinking we had a fair bit done, to which he replied 40km. At this I let out a long f**k, only 10% of the way through the ride! At 9pm, we dropped into a Co-Op as it would be our last chance to gather food for the long night, as we presumed that no shops would be open in the middle of the night (obviously) for us to obtain more sustenance. This was daunting again, no resupply for another 10 hours… Jack also wisely purchased some caffeine tablets which would come into their own later in the night. And so, we set off into the night…


The ride through the night was largely uneventful, given it was dark and there was nobody around. We cycled through and off for the majority of the night, stopping every hour or so to munch on some food and pop some caffeine pills depending on how our bodies were faring. It was a weird part of the ride, seeming to last for ever and yet be over in an instant. It was certainly one of the more peculiar moments on a bike of my life, and one I won’t forget soon. At one point around 2am, we were both low on liquids and pondering where we could get some more. We were passing a Premier Inn and I had the genius idea to utilise a night keep to refill our bottles. I can only imagine the bored teenager’s confusion when he had two cyclist stumble in on him at two o’clock in the morning requesting water before our imminent demise, it was certainly entertaining for us. At around 4am in the morning, where we had to brutally push through our circadian lows, we stopped at a closed petrol station to go our separate ways, Jack back to London, me onwards to Holyhead and my ferry. I was feeling rough at this time, particularly my stomach was in bits, and in my mind I knew I could get a train from Shrewsbury to Holyhead which was only 50km away, so I knew if things got bad, I could always have bailed. I decided to put on my down-filled gilet at this point as we were getting cold, having put on all the cycling clothing we had brought, which was the full shebang for a normal winter’s day ride. So, after a forlorn farewell, we went our solitary ways.  At this point, the down gilet had an incredible effect for me. It really warmed up my core which alleviated my stomach pains and things started to feel better. Soon after I was going by a petrol station that miraculously opened at 5am, so after a 10 min wait on the side of the road, I was able to restock, much to the confusion of the staff once I explained the situation.


Once I left the station, I noticed that there was some light in the sky, I had made it to dawn! The change in mentality once I saw the dawn was incredible, everything seemed easier, and the 200km left to Holyhead seemed a breeze, which I had 12 hours to complete. It was a glorious sunrise too, resulting in numerous stops for photo opportunities, which I didn’t feel bad about as I was on my own now and could stop without feeling bad about holding Jack up. I ploughed on into the day which got warmer as I went on. I was soon into the National Park of Snowdonia and in pure sunshine, even rolling up the sleeves to enhance the arm tans. As I progressed through the park, I started to understand where the stereotype of Wales being full of sheep came from, they were everywhere! At one point I had to take a road though a field full of sheep which was a novel experience. As I continued on, I was getting more and more ahead of schedule for my ferry which was great, as I had been worried that I would be pushed for time and would need to rely on my own legs for a dash to the ferry. But since I had the time cushion, I could amble along, stop for pictures, or have a sit down lunch (which I did in Bala) and had a quick chat with the parents to keep them up to date, they were picking me up from Dublin port after all, they were invested in the ride!


I was soon at Bangor, after some stunning valleys in Snowdonia, before heading onto the island of Anglesey for the final 35km push to Holyhead, after 400km of riding… I was in plenty of time for my ferry, but at this point, the whole ride caught up with me and the 35km turned into a horrific slog that was mentally brutal. I was just wrecked, borderline delusional. My stomach started acting up again, I was hungry but just couldn’t face eating anything. I pushed on and with some inspirational messages from Brett and Jack (who had had to stop after 350km due to knee pains), I managed to roll into Holyhead, capping off the ride at 432km, which I presume will remain my longest bike ride of my life. I asked a lady walking by to take a picture of me as I didn’t want to forget the moment. I then proceeded to the local McDonalds where I proceeded to order two large Big Mac meals. I had burned over 10,000 calories during the ride, might as well make the most of it! After getting on the ferry, I proceeded to lay down thinking it would be difficult to sleep, only to be woken up by a steward telling me we had docked. After rushing to get my bits and get off the boat, I was greeted by my parents and Aunt, but more importantly, two steak sandwiches, which couldn’t have been tastier! Thankfully my recovery from the ride started in the earnest the next day as in classic fashion when my Aunt set me to work in the garden racking leaves of the roof!


The overnight ride was one of the most memorable of my life, and thoroughly enjoyable despite all the low moment, which were soon forgotten. The more I thought about it, it was right on the limit of what I think I could have physically done in a single ride. We were extremely fortunate as well, as we had had a tail wind the whole way to Holyhead, no rain, a mild night, and warm sunshine. Without any of those, I don’t think I would have made it. But overall, the ride had served its purpose of attempting an all-nighter and riding way more than our intended daily distance of 300km, so mentally we were in a good place. My knees had also faired perfectly, as after some consultation with our in-house Brompton Whisperer, we had discovered that the offset of our cranks on our Brompton were asymmetrical, so our left legs were further away from the centre of the bike then our right legs. This imbalance is fine over shorter distances, but over hundreds of kilometres when you’re clipped in, it can really bugger your knees, as we were finding out. So, I had installed an asymmetrical bottom bracket onto my Brompton and used from pedal washers to make sure my pedals were the same distance from the centre of the bike left and right. This obviously made all the difference, as I had had virtually no knee pains, whereas Jack had (and he didn’t have the asymmetric BB installed). This was a huge relief mentally as it made me feel confident that my knees would be able to take the rigours of the TAW and actually survive.



Midnight caffeine pill stop!
Sunrise at last
Beautiful
Sick of snacking!
Stunning valley somewhere in Snowdonia
More stunning vistas
It was a phenomenal day for it!
Magnum stop before the last 50km push
Done and delirious!

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