Central London CTC blog

Not all of us enjoy Audax. Of its nature, Audax is an event for individuals, and self-sufficiency, of equipment and navigation, a requirement. That is the challenge we accept I guess.

I bunked off for the day for the Wednesday Wander 200 out of Ruislip, another Rocco/Liz production. The forecast was not ideal, cloud and squally winds heading in from the west. I was running late for the start as I drove down the A40. A big stone chip flew off the opposite carriageway and starred the windscreen – not a good auspice. I signed on (a meagre dozen or so riders) and was just about ready to go at 8:00 when I was reminded to pay for the car park. As I fiddled with purse and ticket machine, the party left.

The exit from the outer suburbs is rather complicated and the instructions not entirely clear, a consequence perhaps of the route’s great familiarity to the Willesden CC. Within five minutes of the start, I was faced with an ambiguity and had to track back. Distanced already!

It was at this point I realized that, despite my obsessively checking off the kit list, I had left behind the pocket pump. So I was heading off across the Chilterns into Oxfordshire, solo, on Veloflex race tyres, with no means to fix a flat? Not clever. So it really was vital for me not to be last on the road.

I told myself to ride steadily, and not chase and blow up. Soon after crossing the Grand Union Canal, I caught up to a back marker. Together we joined up with pair of Willesdens and rode steadily together, sharing the lead. All would be well. From Chalfont St Giles, the route heads across the Chilterns through Coleshill and Penn Street, as beguiling as ever. But once off the Chilterns, it employs some busy roads via Thame and Bicester to the turn at Chipping Norton.

Several times we encountered the open-roads equivalent of urban White Van Man, the Rural Flatbed Trucker. These Transit-based dropside trucks deliver all sorts – farm supplies, drainage pipes, agricultural machinery, any old rubbish – and their drivers are expert at judging the width of the vehicle‘s broader rear section to the last inch as they fly past at 60 mph. But this does not include the meter or so we cyclists consider an absolute minimum for a fast-moving vehicle.

The forecast had been for increasing wind. Somewhere north of Oxford, heading west along the rolling drag of the A44 into Chipping Norton, this became very apparent. After the control at the now effusively-friendly Market Cafe (where I met Mike Oliver, the only other CLCTC riding the event), it had really gathered force, enough to tear foliage off the trees. In effect turning through 180 degees, we got some benefit from it, though its direction was capricious. In one stretch I was flying along at 50 kph for minutes on end. Then it would veer and threaten to tip one into the hedge.

I left Mike to it and forged on to try to catch a couple of yellow jerseys ahead. They seemed to dangle there in the distance for miles. I was glad of the shelter when I got there. They were two old hands, one in the jersey of Agen CC (France), clipping steadily along, scarcely deflected by the gusty wind as they rode along closely abreast. We stopped together for a goodly while at the final control, a gas station in Thame, as others wandered in.

We left in dribs and drabs and after a few hundred meters I decided to don my rain gilet. As I wrestled with the flapping garment in the squally wind, everyone disappeared down the road and there I was, tout seul again.

Feeling rather grumpy, I stomped on towards Princes Risborough and ground over the hill to Great Missenden. This was where I really got into trouble with cramp in last year‘s Muswell Hills 200, but this time it was OK, sort of. I caught up with a young Willesden, always handy to have by your side for the approach to Ruislip, and we blasted back toward the finish.

And this is where I came unstuck again. He surged through an amber at the big junction by Ruislip Manor tube gesticulating wildly forward. But with a gap of perhaps 30 metres having opened out, I would have had to run the red light – no way. A complicating factor was that the finish was not at the start, rather it was at Rocco’s home some several kilometers away, with a hand-drawn map for instruction. But my companion had brought us in on a slightly different approach.

I do not know the layout of the several Ruislips, and the A-Z was in the car (of course); in the next half hour I explored them quite thoroughly. And so my 200K Audax ended up as it had begun: lost in Ruislip, in rush-hour traffic. It could so easily have been a DNF.

And therein I think lies the Audax challenge: will you see it through, whether the day goes well or ill? I know it would have spoiled my day not to have reported to the finish with my completed brevet card, even if it had meant being home in the bath an hour earlier. And what‘s another 10K or so when you already have 210 in the bag?