Not alone

The fourth day on the bike on holiday was finally not alone!  For three days I have kept my riding well within my safety comfort zone, afraid to push it either in terms of technical ups or downs or in terms of speed knowing that my wellbeing was solely dependent on me and that in remote areas I needed to stay safe.  Finally a day where I'm out with friends and can enjoy the freedom ... except I've done three days on the bike and I'm knackered.

So, revise that.  Finally a day where I can work hard on conserving as much energy as possible, hide behind people's wheels, do the bare minimum needed to stay up, and make careful decisions on gears, drinking and feeding.  Oh yes, that's much better.

So the fourth day was the tried and tested Llandegla after a night of camping in the pouring rain.  By 10am the weather though had brightened.  Or perhaps just stopped raining.  So off we went to the red run.  And on the technical descent bit I lost much time to the others, but hey, I didn't care, I'd carefully positioned myself at the back of the group so I didn't need to feel under pressure and could just roll along the track, and all was fine.  Between you and me I was a little shocked at how much distance I did lose here.  But hey ho, I can blame the heavy legs for sure.  Punctured the rear tyre some way into the route, and in proper Welsh fashion this was the moment the rain started to fall, and the midges started to bite.  Lovely.  Not.  Other than that, an incident free day.  With cake.