Woke up Sunday morning to the wind blowing like mad and thought do I really need to be doing this ride!!
On arrival at Cyprus Hall Burgess Hill to sign on I found out that the ride would be 77.2 miles not the 75 miles I thought!!! Oh well what's a couple of extra miles!!
Unfortunately there was nobody else from MSTC doing the long ride so I was on my own!! There were a number of other like minded people doing the ride but all looked a lot younger than me! Anyway having signed on I started at 08.36 and headed out West through Ashurst, West Washington, West Chiltington, Billingshurst, Wisborough Green, Loxwood and onto Ellens Green, which was basically the turn round point.
I stopped very briefly to get my timing chip swiped and to refuel. The journey to here had been uneventful, although there was a lot of surface water in places at least it wasn't raining!! But the wind was just terrible which reduced the average speed somewhat!
After a few minutes at this stop I headed out on the return journey saying to myself "it's only another 35 miles" and if you looked at the map the right way up it was all down hill !!!!!! Who was I kidding!!!
The ride back went through Broadbridge Heath, Barn's Green, Southwater, West Grinstead, Ashurst, Partridge Green, Alborne, Hassocks, HurstpierPoint, Keymer and back to Burgess Hill to the Cyprus Hall.
Well it wasn't down hill coming back and the wind was bloody worse!!! But at least it didn't rain!!!
I arrived in one piece after a very tough ride. My timing chip time was 5hrs 14 mins 43 secs [the Gold Standard for my age group OAP was 5hrs 30 mins] so I was well pleased with that, especially as my actual riding time was 5hrs 7 mins on my computer.
Will I be back next year??? Of course I will!!!!
Del