L2P - Day 3

Waking a little heady for day 3 due to my excessive socialising I had seen on the board in our reception that rain was forecast for the first time on our challenge from London to Paris. Today luckily we had a later start as riders were being released periodically in line with their ability and the slower riders had to leave the earliest. At this stage I have say my legs and thighs were starting to feel heavy and the riding so far and amazing it was taking its toll on my temple of a body. The chat over breakfast was most people were saying how easy the day ahead would be as it was only 65 miles. Today had also been selected by a few riders as fancy dress day if you wanted to subscribe to that. I didn’t! However, today I did actually wear my first cycling top ever to ride in and that was sent to me by my charity Mind. All I will say is that there is nowhere to hide in Lycra and it is not something I will be pursuing.

After downing breakfast we had the call that Ryan had arrived from his different hotel. We scooted around the front of our hotel to pick him up and we were then ready to set off for the town of Beauvais 65 miles away.

Disco Dave led us out for the morning session propelling strength and leadership from the from the front to drive the group on. "credited".

The hills in the morning segment before the first water stop at 22 miles were hard. All these hills were starting to bore me a little now. Monotonous hill after hill! I spent my morning session riding with Simon the Fulham fan and listening to how lucky he was to go to Hamburg for the European final a few years back. I have never seen my team in a Euro final but still have fingers crossed for one day...

One notable point of interest was that Lucy looked a lot more comfortable in the saddle today. A few people had told her in the last few days that she was rolling and to maybe lower the saddle a little as she seemed far away from the pedals. The previous evening under the influence Paul had spat this out in a more "to the point" way by tactically saying “your ass is all over the pace love” and you need to do something.

With the weather holding off we had one last hill until the water stop. It was a very big one and a testing one but that is when the weather turned sour. The rain started beating down and all of a sudden the mood in the group changed. This was now very hard work in tough conditions and not the enjoyable country ride in the sun that all the brochures promised…

Soaked, hungry and slightly grumpy we all arrived at the water stop and we cowered under a marque refilling water bottles and eating bananas, cereal bars and jelly babies. Just before we were ready to go 3 cyclists arrived in their fancy dress attired as the three musketeers. This instantly brought a smile to all in the vicinity. Well done lads!

We had been really lucky with the weather so far and that continued in our favour after our short splattering as after only an hour of lashings of rain it cleared and the sun poked its shy head out again for the next set of miles on to the lunch stop at 40 miles. During these miles the team work as a pack of cyclists was excellent. We were tight together as a group and all driving each other as pack. The cycle to lunch was an easier section and not as many hills as the morning section, which helped. On arrival to lunch we had a great setting with a lovely communal green with football pitch in the middle and an old church as the backdrop. Everyone queued for their fuel and then spread out on the lawn eating. With news from the Skyline staff that storms were predicted at 4pm we set off in haste after lunch to beat the rain.

‎Again, word of the day was teamwork and we drove on as a pack of 7 until 52 miles when…disaster...the first puncture of the group. Now this wasn’t any standard way to get a puncture though. Lucy and Michael collided somehow whilst in group formation and it ended with Michael suffer the fatal punishment of punctureville. The problem was quickly rectified by some sterling work in replacing the knackered bit of rubber with a new one and some air. The air element though caused some interest as the lot of us were not clued up on inflating with gas canisters.

Once we set off again we were all back at it and hill master Michael had one of my most amusing moments of the day. With Michael attacking one hill from the back of the pack and whilst passing everyone on a climb and sledging each member on the way past he had his comeuppance at the top of the hill. As we all followed to a stop point he toppled with a “stuck in cleat moment” at a standstill on the side of road. Karma.

The last section of the ride chucked up strong winds as we came in Beauvais. Ryan led the group with good strength and took the hit with the wind for all of us. The last part of the ride was in busy rush hour Beauvais and also with Dave moaning about the ridiculousness of the organisers taking us this way ot the hotel, in this traffic at this time. Seeing the urbanisation again really made me appreciate all the countryside that we had been riding in previously.

The day was really a great group ride and great teamwork from all. Simon especially had an outstanding day really improving from previous days. Strong.

Final day tomorrow! Excited and sad.