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4km later as I turned right up the first hill of the day a local guy
stuck his head out of his car window, 'bloody hell, you'll be fit if
you ever get to the top of this!', his sing song voice announced. I
smiled sweetly at him. 'Bloody locals, what do they know?' I muttered.
We were hardened Lands Ender's. We knew hardship; we knew about hills,
we'd just ridden from Cornwall for gods' sake! I dropped a few cogs and
settled down to the grinding task ahead. Three minutes later as I
pushed my right pedal down the front wheel involuntarily lifted off the
gravel surface, I leaned a bit more forward. One minute after that my
head was so far forward I swear I could see the contact patch of the
front tyre as it hit the ground. One more minute after that I stopped,
my legs burning. Julie slogged past. One minute after that Julie
stopped, her legs burning. We looked at the map'A delightful track
wound from sea level to 400m over only 2km. The Brecon Beacons had
begun.
It's
not for no reason that the SAS choose to train here in preference to
any other area in the UK. I spoke to a friend of mine who spent some
time with the aforementioned forces and he told me that the sheer
verticality of the gradients, hostile nature of the boggy tops, and
exposed rocky ridges together with the remoteness make this area one of
the harshest wilderness environments to train in the UK. Despite its
lovely looks on summer days it has been responsible for killing off no
small quantity of Parachute Regiment soldiers and experienced SAS men.
After that first day I had no difficulty believing any of it.
6km after leaving Abergavenny we were back at sea level''The last 4km
had taken us up to 400m and then cruelly right back down again. The
pattern began. Even early in the day we thanked our lucky stars that we
were only trying to get across the Brecons by the easiest route
possible and not actually 'doing anything complex'. There was no doubt
that some of the finest riding of the trip took place over the next 12
hours, but when we finally arrived at 'The Bache' B & B 14 hours
after we started having covered 80km and over 3000m of ascent we were
(or so we thought') comprehensively knackered.
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Our
second slog from sea level took us up 10km of road to the Grwyne
Reservoir at 500m. A stop at a stream to cool our feet at the 7km mark
was a heavenly highlight I can remember, but the rest of the 10km climb
to get there was purely hot grind as the Sun pumped out another 30
Degree day and forest boundaries mocked us by throwing their shade on
the grass verges of the track but rarely onto its gravel surface.
As we finally crested the wall of the reservoir we found a clump of
trees, stopped, and began the eating and digestion game of forcing down
soda farls and weak apple juice in an attempt to claw back some much
needed glycogen. I already knew my heartbeat had been writing checks my
liver and muscles couldn't sustain, and that my glycogen levels were
far too low to keep up this pace for the rest of the day. Now that I
knew first hand about bonking I wasn't going to voluntarily offer
myself to the god of misery, even if it did mean eating soda farls and
removing any likelihood of normal bowel operation in the foreseeable
future.
We were joined by sheep, a horse, and some glorious views over the man
made lake. A cool breeze washed over us and just for a few minutes it
was heaven. The few tourists who had wandered this far were having a
picnic in the distance and I wondered about nipping over and begging
for food scraps'I'm sure they wouldn't have minded really! Next
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