The Devil is in the detail

Its 10:50pm and the Devil Ride is now under 10 hours away. I can gaurantee that there are a good number of us still awake in Mid Wales at the moment pondering what the hell we have let ourselves in for tomorrow. In these last few hours the thoughtprocesses will be going into overdrive, some of them now way too late in the day to consider: have I trained enough; have I got enough food; did I bring the right clothes for this beautiful August weather; is my bike gearing finely tuned; are my brakes ok; have I checked whether I need new tyres/blocks/chain/cassette; have I got tools/tubes/spares; do I know the route; do I know where the start is, the feeding stations...

I'm reading 'King of Sports', a textbook on road racing written in the 60's by Peter Ward. Though its dated there are many chapters which still are just as relevant today. The eve of the first sportive I've ever entered probably isn't the best time to start reading the chapter 'Preperation'. The opening paragraph doesn't bode well: 'Try to get to bed early the two nights before the event'.

I'm not sure 4am and 2am fall into that category. Though it doesn't mention whether drinking 3 bottles of wine or numerous pints of Guinness is unencouraged. This week has been disasterous for preparation. Impaling my thumb on a Shimano derailleur at the beginning of the week has kept me off the bike and in the Pub. Anyway didn't Landis claim his stunning victory was because of his couple of beers the night before?

At 8am tomorrow I'll meet the rest of our group that help form the field of 500 entrants. Its the first road sportive for most of us and having only ridden mountain bike sportives before I'm not sure what to expect - will people work together? how are the open roads going to cope with so many riders? My biggest question is how long is it going to take. I've never ridden anything flat out without essential stops before so can't gauge it.

The medal categories certainly look challenging on this course - 6 hrs 12 mins for a Gold, 7 hours for Silver. Thats bastard quick, maybe 17mph average. I rode a 20 mile section with Gwyd this afternoon, from Nantmel joining the route through Abbey Cwm-hir. There are a couple of climbs on that section which are testing but don't even register on the route profile map! Its going to be very very interesting reaching there tomorrow with 80 miles in the legs, plus there are at least 2 15% climbs in the last 15 miles...