Six Megaliths 300

NamelessPhil

Is anyone else doing the Six Megaliths 300 audax on 7th September? Entries close on the 30th August.

Having done the King's Mountain and Ardattin audaxes in the Spring and the incomparable Boards Evil in June, I thought I'd round off the season by doing a 300km ride.

slap/dash

NamelessPhil wrote: »

Is anyone else doing the Six Megaliths 300 audax on 7th September? Entries close on the 30th August.

Having done the King's Mountain and Ardattin audaxes in the Spring and the incomparable Boards Evil in June, I thought I'd round off the season by doing a 300km ride.

Ya spacer. That's mental

NamelessPhil

Can it be any more mental than the Boards Evil?

Actually there's a fair bit of climbing in it. 2800m if the route is to be believed.

So, come on then, who else wants to join in?

slap/dash

NamelessPhil wrote: »

Can it be any more mental than the Boards Evil?

Actually there's a fair bit of climbing in it. 2800m if the route is to be believed.

So, come on then, who else wants to join in?

Only fir that I'm in Venice that day

Inquitus

Aye I am in for this, the dying cow and then the dying light.

Ole Rodrigo

Yep, I'm in. Just posting off the entry forms.

NamelessPhil

Great! I won't be the only nutter on the roads of Meath that Saturday.

I rode the first 100km a couple of weeks ago as I'm not that familiar with the roads. From the top of Fourknocks you can see all the way to Lough Crew. It's a horrible route because you can see where you're going to go, from megalith to megalith, except that you'll be doing a 40km+ detour each time to get there!

kencoo

posted off the form today. dreading it!

G rock

Would love to get another under the belt but this year just didn't turn out the way I wanted it to!

cdaly_

G rock wrote: »

Would love to get another under the belt but this year just didn't turn out the way I wanted it to!

Alas, same here. I managed the Kings Mountain in Feb, another in March and that's it all year. I'm gonna see can I get out for the Dying pair at least...

The Ging and I

A leg loosener for the dying cow !
BIG plus- its on a Saturday.

LastGasp

Can't make this one unfortunately as OH is away and I'm on child minding duties next weekend. Should be out for Dying Cow and Dying Light though.

Good Luck !

Cheers, LG

kencoo

does anyone know if you can park at whitehall church for the day?

cdaly_

Parking's unrestricted there IIRC. Just remember the barriers at the entrance, bikes on the back of the car, not on top!

kencoo

thanks

cdaly_

NamelessPhil wrote: »

I rode the first 100km a couple of weeks ago as I'm not that familiar with the roads. From the top of Fourknocks you can see all the way to Lough Crew. It's a horrible route because you can see where you're going to go, from megalith to megalith, except that you'll be doing a 40km+ detour each time to get there!

I don't think you're gonna see much on sat. Looks like being rainy all day...

Inquitus

Aye weather looks shíte but it all adds to the sense of achievement at the end..........

daragh_

Good luck all.

Headcases, the lot of ye!

NamelessPhil

Thanks! Best of luck in Charleville!

I think I'll be wearing almost exactly the same kit as I wore for the audax in February. It may even have been warmer in February, once the frost wore off it was quite a nice day.

cdaly_

Good luck folks, have a good one. I'll be thinking of ye around 140kms when I finally stir myself from the bed...

NamelessPhil

320km 24km average speed for the day. Arrived back at 9:30pm, having left my house at 5:30am. It was cold, wet and windy but thanks to Doug and Roddy for the company and the puncture fixing. Now everything hurts and I was soaked through. Jens Voight would have been proud of my legs, they didn't complain once!

rflynnr

A remarkable day. 12 souls turned up in Whitehall at 6am. The organiser Ronnie Moore outlined the nature of an unsupported event and off we went. The apocalyptic weather forecast wasn't initially borne out: it was damp but the rain wasn't heavy. The group held together pretty much all the way to Stamullen at 64km but thereafter broke in smaller groups. I found myself with Namelessphil and Doug (who may also have a Boards moniker?) and we spun along until just outside Tullyallen when my right hand gear cable snapped. Doug proffered a gear cable but it appeared to have a nodule on both ends and none of us had wire clippers. So: decision time. Call it a day or attempt a repair. NamelessPhil pointed out that Drogheda was only 5k back so, having Googled a local bike shop I headed up alone. However, when I got into Drogheda I discovered that the second nodule was an illusion: there were in fact two cables. Cursing my own stupidity I nonetheless changed the gear cable and headed back onto the course. I met one group in Tullyallen at 132k and having booted it for the following 46k met up with Namelessphil and Doug again in Kells. The prospect of finishing alone had crossed my mind but with every passing kilometre after Kells I was incredibly relieved to be riding with them as the weather significantly worsened. Namelessphil was incredibly unfortunate to have two punctures in the space of 30 mins, both down to a poor road surface and both of which were fixed in a downpour. By Kilmessan, I was completely soaked despite sealskin socks and gloves, boots covers, and rain jacket. As we stood in the local Centra, I got an attack of the shivers, literally unable to stop shaking as my core temperature dropped. Back on the road, I warmed up a bit but darkness was now falling and the rain became even heavier. The last 90(?) mins were surreal: pitch black country roads went on forever punctuated by Ratoath and Kilbride. By this stage, despite tired limbs, we were booting it aided by flat roads and a tailwind for most of the way. We finally - and almost unbelievably - reached Whitehall at 9.30. The relief was infinite. I owe a huge debt to Namelessphil and Doug without whose company I don't know if I'd have made it through the last hours: two physically and mentally tough individuals. Overall though, woke up this morning delighted: if 300k is possible in those conditions then, logically, 400k must be . Finally many thanks to Ronnie for organising the event: he's shown me roads in North Dublin and Meath I've been passing for years but never actually explored.

NamelessPhil

I'd love to know what our average speed was from Tara back to Whitehall, because we certainly floored it! I had a job trying to catch you on the road back to Ratoath, with Doug's light casting my speeding shadow on the ground. I'd love to know how the others got on.

I have never been so glad to see the sulphurous glow of Dublin in the distance. My Garmin appears to have had a conniption and only recorded as far as Tullyallen.

rflynnr

Is there a way of singling out particular segments on the Garmin to answer the Tara-Whitehall average speed?

Inquitus

What a day!

Met up at Whitehall and set off at 6.15am, Group set an easy pace through Finglas and up through St Margarets breaking up as we circled every hill round Garristown and Bellowstown and Naul and Balrothery! I can only account for about 5 Megaliths, that being said I don't ever want to see one again, and were any of the people who built the bloody things still alive I'd have words

First break was at Stamullen, and while it was cold and drizzly it was passable to this point. My fingers had gone numb due to the short fingered gloves, but I grabbed the warm ones out of my bag and that did the job. Weather got pretty miserable shortly after and as we continued our tour of every hill near a megalith we made it to the second control at Tullyalley after around 130k. Nowhere decent to nab some food and again we were reduced to eating and drinking a coffee outside a Londis in the rain feeling cold and miserable.

I had settled into riding with another brave soul at this point, who's name I can't remember much to my shame, as we spent the remainder of the day together, names always go in one ear and out of the other. At this point I really wasn't enjoying myself but the weather broke, it got slightly warmer and stopped raining which lifted the spirits immensely.

The weather held until we got to Kells when it started to drizzle again, some more Rice Crispie squares and a couple of coffee's outside another Londis, with the rain beginning to fall again we left our 3rd Control at about 188km. The apocalyptic weather we had been worried about then reared it's ugly head and did not let up from here on in. At this point we were thoroughly drenched to the core and only the exertion was keeping the body temp up, even stopping for a few minutes would bring on a deep cold. Driving rain and a howling icy cold wind dogged our every move and as we climbed up to the Lough Crew Megalith the temperature was also starting to drop as the evening began to draw in.

It was now just a case of getting it done, and we rolled into the final Control at Kilmessan at 257km about 8pm. Some hot chocolate and some more Rice Crispie bars and it was time to move on. I was utterly drenched to the core at this point, it was dark, getting colder and I was a layer short. Shivering while sheltering in Londis and not feeling the best.

After a brief respite my intrepid colleague and I set off from Kilmessan, I cracked for a brief moment and said **** this I am not going on, but after a moments deliberation we set off into the dark deluge once more.

Unfortunately we were not done with Megaliths and we climbed briefly up to Tara before heading towards Ratoath and something approaching civilisation. We made really good time on this last stretch with the wind at our backs and flat rolling roads.

On the outskirts of Finglas with only about 9km to go I got a flat, it must have been about 10pm. We tried to repair it in the driving rain, but it kept puncturing immediately, we searched in vain for a bit of glass that might be causing the issue but with the weather conditions and the uncontrollable shivering we decided to part company and he would come back in his car and effect a rescue!

I walked 6km from there to Finglas Village, just 3km shy of my goal of Whitehall when he pulled up and very kindly drove me back to Swords. 306km on the Garmin due to a couple of wrong turns here and there, and a huge thank you to the lads who's name I unfortunately can't recall.

Some day on a bike, in the end it eclipses the famed WW200 of a few years back for the epic scale of the misery inflicted. It was midnight before I got back in the front door.

dc2

Likewise NamelessPhil and rflynner - thanks for your company and enthusiasm especially in that horrendous last few hours of rain. After the finish I just got in my car and drove home to Swords in my wet gear. Despite the heat on full I got that fit of shivers and could not get warm even after a hot shower. I got under the duvet and of course as I got warm I nodded off and woke again at 1.30am starving - so I had quite a late dinner!! Up to then I wasn't physically capable of preparing something to eat with those shivers.

By the way - it looks like luck was on my side from the mechanical point of view - looked at my bike this morning and rear wheel has a few loose spokes and a slight buckle!! Glad I didn't have to true a wheel in the wind and rain and a fit of shivers.

cdaly_

Well done you lot. Sounds like epic work was done.

rflynnr wrote: »

Is there a way of singling out particular segments on the Garmin to answer the Tara-Whitehall average speed?

If there's a lap button on the garmin, you could probably edit the file and add laps at various points. Alternatively, just do the time/distance calculation...

Inquitus

rflynnr wrote: »

Is there a way of singling out particular segments on the Garmin to answer the Tara-Whitehall average speed?

Yes, you can drag along the elevation graph at the bottom and single out any bit you want. Run your pointer along it, determine the start and finish of the bit you want to analyse and remember where they sare then drag from start to finish holding the mouse down.

CramCycle

rflynnr wrote: »

Is there a way of singling out particular segments on the Garmin to answer the Tara-Whitehall average speed?

Even simpler would be to upload it to Strava (if you use it) and just make a segment if one does not already exist.

feck sake lads

Mega Respect lads i was thinking of takng tis up next year but after those excellent reports i think i'll stick to what i know.:eek:

Inquitus

feck sake lads wrote: »

Mega Respect lads i was thinking of takng tis up next year but after those excellent reports i think i'll stick to what i know.:eek:

Audax is good fun and like any race or spin you can always end up on the end of some really poor weather The Mick Byrne and the Boards Evil 200 were both blessed with nice days, sometimes though, you are just **** out of luck

feck sake lads

did everyone finish at around 9.30 just curious.

Inquitus

feck sake lads wrote: »

did everyone finish at around 9.30 just curious.

No, that was the first group only, I would hazard a guess the last finished well after midnight, not sure though.

feck sake lads

Thank god for that so ,the first group sound like full time cyclists.
hemm maybe i'll give it a go next year if thats the case i'm to old and slow to be doing any fast cycling.
anyway respect to all those who done it great bit of cycling thats for sure.;)

rflynnr

feck sake lads wrote: »

Thank god for that so ,the first group sound like full time cyclists.
hemm maybe i'll give it a go next year if thats the case i'm to old and slow to be doing any fast cycling.
anyway respect to all those who done it great bit of cycling thats for sure.;)

You'll be fine. Doug (akaDC2) and NamelessPhil are pretty serious: the former has done the Race Around Ireland while the latter is a competitive club cyclist. But I'm just a common or garden type who goes out on spins twice a week at most. I'm not even in a club. The daunting aspect of Saturday wasn't the distance: it was the conditions. If we'd done it a day earlier, the accounts above would sound very different.

NamelessPhil

rflynnr wrote: »

You'll be fine. Doug (akaDC2) and NamelessPhil are pretty serious: the former has done the Race Around Ireland while the latter is a competitive club cyclist. But I'm just a common or garden type who goes out on spins twice a week at most. I'm not even in a club. The daunting aspect of Saturday wasn't the distance: it was the conditions. If we'd done it a day earlier, the accounts above would sound very different.

Erm, I'm not even that good of a competitive cyclist, I couldn't even complete an A4 race in March this year. I just do club league racing and the occasional women's criterium.

By August 2012 the furthest I'd cycled was 107km on my own. I joined a club (St. Tiernan's) last September, I say joined I mean that I turned up one Saturday on a hybrid with ordinary shoes and said I'm going out with ye today! I got a racer (Rose WRS-Pro aluminium) in October and haven't looked back!

I had a good winter of getting out most Saturdays with the club, getting used to group riding and generally getting fitter and faster. In February I did the King's Mountain 200km audax, another 200km audax in April and the Boards Evil in June. This was my first 300km+

It isn't really the distance, it's far more of a mental thing. If you are prepared to suffer and realise that there will be points where you want to climb off and cry but they will pass you'll be fine. Audax is not a sportive or a race. You have 20 hours to complete the 300km at a minimum speed of 15km/h and a max of 30km/h. You might even have some good company for the ride.

feck sake lads

Thanks for the encouragment guys getting to sound more like my kind of cycling.i'm a experience cyclest well doingit all my life done plenty century rides in my time but these days its more 30 to 50 milers on my todd average speed 13 to 14.5 mph on a good day.
i can feel a good winter coming on.
thanks again hope i didnt hijack this thread.:o

Wishbone Ash

NamelessPhil wrote: »

... you want to climb off and cry...

I feel like that just thinking about it!

MediaMan

I also endured and survived this jolly day out.

Not much to add to the excellent reports already posted. I'd agree that, as others have said, completing an event such as this is more down to persistence and mental attitude than anything else. The weather made this very tough, and from Kells onwards it was really a matter of doggedly pedalling onwards, focused on getting to the next junction, and then the next and so on.

Two of us, accompanied by Ronnie the organiser, arrived back in Whitehall at about 11:10 pm, which made it almost exactly 17 hours on the road. Of that we had about 15 hours moving and 2 hours shivering, taking on food and coffee and consulting cue sheets. That was way longer than I expected and I think the weather was the main factor in that.

I think that navigation is a a big thing in an audax that really distinguishes it from a regular sportive. There were 230 turns on this route. For a lot of the route we used a Garmin 500 to navigate, with an occasional check of the the cue sheets. This worked well enough, but being with someone who knew the route was even better!

Cycling in the dark was a new experience for me. Good lighting is a must and I think a helmet-mounted light (which I didn't have) is essential.

Great bunch of people to cycle with and hats off to the Audax Ireland guys - they really looked out for us newbies and gave us great support throughout the ride!

LastGasp

NamelessPhil wrote: »

Erm, I'm not even that good of a competitive cyclist, I couldn't even complete an A4 race in March this year. I just do club league racing and the occasional women's criterium.

Don't mind her - she's as fit as a fiddle and as strong as a horse, and leaves almost all the (Audax) blokes eating her dust - if only they could keep up !

Seriously though, well done to everyone who attempted or completed what souds like a very tough day out !

14mph is around 22kph, which is what I usually manage, and I can finish most Audax events with a comfortable margin. I like to think that my average including stops is around 20kph (5 hours per 100k) but in real life it usually takes a bit longer for one reason or another, so I always set out on a 300 expecting to finish in 15 hours, and am usually disappointed when it takes more like 17 !

The choice of clothing is always crucial, and the main thing is to try and avoid getting cold. If the forecast is bad then it's critical to carry enough clothes, which can be a problem for people used to packing light and carrying nothing more than a light jacket and a spare tube. As several have pointed out good lights are essential, and a helmet light is very handy for reading a routesheet. SatNav is a fantastic help if you can manage it as it saves all the grief of looking at routesheets, identifying signs, keeping routesheet dry etc, although you should still be familiar with the routesheet as a back-up in the event of technical issues with the SatNav !
See ye next weekend for the Dying Cow 200, I hope the forecast is better !
Cheers, LG.

cdaly_

MediaMan wrote: »

Two of us, accompanied by Ronnie the organiser, arrived back in Whitehall at about 11:10 pm, which made it almost exactly 17 hours on the road. Of that we had about 15 hours moving and 2 hours shivering, taking on food and coffee and consulting cue sheets. That was way longer than I expected and I think the weather was the main factor in that.

On my last (only so far) 300k, I took 15 hours moving and about 18 hours door to door. I ended up doing the second half entirely solo but it was in gorgeous weather. I have made the mistake in the past of trying to keep up with bunches and ending up burned out well before the finish so I didn't worry about that sort of thing for the 300. Resting when you need to and staying warm are crucial to this lark.

Great bunch of people to cycle with and hats off to the Audax Ireland guys - they really looked out for us newbies and gave us great support throughout the ride!

+1 to this, they keep an eye out for novices and keep us going...

LastGasp wrote: »

As several have pointed out good lights are essential, and a helmet light is very handy for reading a routesheet. SatNav is a fantastic help if you can manage it as it saves all the grief of looking at routesheets, identifying signs, keeping routesheet dry etc, although you should still be familiar with the routesheet as a back-up in the event of technical issues with the SatNav !

Cycling at night is great. A real zen thing of you, the bike and the road. The helmet light is handy all right but I found my Fenix TK11 a bit heavy after hours and hours. I've since got a much lighter Fenix E11 as a helmet light.

The other thing I do is carry two laminated cue-sheets. Waterproof and a spare on hand for when the first one detaches and blows away on a descent...

kencoo

what a day! Hell on earth....id say it stopped raining for only 45mins the whole day. (that just makes it epic ehhh?)

did most of it with inquintus here who gave a good account of our day. Puncture at 100k or so then pinched the 1st spare so had to use my 2nd. Used all 02 canisters too so had to manage 200k with no pump or tubes.
Once the rain set in it really set in! i had old school paper maps which disintegrated in my pocket.
At the last stop i walked around the shop looking for something to eat and looked around to see 2 staff members mopping the floor after me. I say they had to mop the whole shop.
Inquintus got a flat with id say 6k/10k to go which we couldnt fix. I kicked on to get the car but got lost - cycled to Phibsboro before i got my bearings and then back to Whitehall. 320k in all.
Set an average of 23kph apparently however i was not back until 11:20 so that means i spent 3 hours stopped somewhere... i was actually surprised how long i was out.
When home, had a shower and straight to bed with no dinner. Wrecked all day yesterday.

Tough day with conditions. A good bit of climbing but nothing too serious. Toughest cycle i have done to date all the same.

feck sake lads

savage cycling ah to hell with that caper i'm sticking to easy day rides:eek::eek: