{"id":609,"date":"2015-05-16T10:14:11","date_gmt":"2015-05-16T10:14:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.adp-stuff.co.uk\/?p=609"},"modified":"2015-05-16T11:49:58","modified_gmt":"2015-05-16T11:49:58","slug":"15-may-2015-duns-and-whiteadder-reservoir","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.adp-stuff.co.uk\/?p=609","title":{"rendered":"15 May 2015 &#8211; Duns and Whiteadder Reservoir"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.strava.com\/activities\/305005768\/embed\/e0573e65ada1f3404f179a63a023c557b4ccc28a\" width=\"590\" height=\"405\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>In early June, I plan to join some others in attempting to ride a full 100 miles in one day, for no other reason than to be able to say that we&#8217;ve done it. A bucket list kind of a thing. Afterwards I will return to the average 30-40 mile jaunts, but before doing the 100 miler I need to build up to it with one or two rides in the 70-80 mile range. That is what today&#8217;s 75 mile ride was all about.<\/p>\n<p>The lead-up wasn&#8217;t ideal. I had been off the bike due to gout of all things, but was on the mend due to a course of colchicine from the doctor. I did a short ride the day before and all seemed well, so I was up bright and early for an 8.30am start. My breakfast was just a couple of slices of toast and jam, but I packed two cheese rolls, a banana, two cereal bars and a bar of fudge in my backpack, plus plenty of money to buy more food if necessary. Also two full bottles of water on the bike.<\/p>\n<p>I set off up the A7 on a cool, sunny morning just as Colette was leaving in the car to spend a few days with her mum (she isn&#8217;t taking part in the 100 mile challenge due to her bad back at the moment). I was consciously trying to pace myself, selecting a nice easy gear on the uphills and freewheeling on the downhill. It wasn&#8217;t long before I got to Stow and took a big drink &#8211; got to stay hydrated.<\/p>\n<p>Between Stow and Lauder there is a whopper of a hill, with a 15% gradient for the first part. It felt quite hard but I just eased my way up in bottom gear till the view opened out. The final part of the climb was much easier and I stopped at the top to admire the view over the moor stretching out in all directions with lots of interesting paths to possibly explore sometime. I rewarded myself with some fudge then got myself ready for the high speed descent into Lauder.<\/p>\n<p>After Lauder, I took a left turn onto a road that joined the A697 which heads towards Coldstream. Duns wasn&#8217;t signposted so I stopped at the junction to double check on the map &#8211; taking a wrong turn was unthinkable as doing 75 miles seemed hard enough without having to add on any unplanned detours.<\/p>\n<p>The road was moderately busy, but it got a lot quieter after taking the turnoff for Duns on the B6456. The road through open countryside was pretty flat with very gentle undulations and I was feeling good. I made sure to have plenty of swigs from my water bottle and eat one of my cereal bars, and even though I was taking it easy, I seemed to whizz along, effortlessly eating up the miles. At the junction with the A6105, I turned left and freewheeled into Duns.<\/p>\n<p>A glance at my Strava showed that I&#8217;d done an average of about 15mph so far which was much faster than expected and could only mean one thing: I&#8217;d been pushed along by a following wind. I tried not to think of what that would mean for the second half of the ride and went in search of a shop to buy a bottle of water.<\/p>\n<p>Leaving Duns in the direction of Gifford was uphill: a theme for things to come. It wasn&#8217;t too hard although I did my best to resist attacking the smaller hills and stayed sat in the saddle, pushing a low gear. There were some downhill stretches too, which were spoiled somewhat by clouds of big black flies making high speed impacts with my face. I felt envious of the passing motorcyclist with his full face visor!<\/p>\n<p>The Gifford road left the cultivated fields behind to wind its way through woods until it crossed the Whiteadder Water, where it entered open moorland and I felt the full force of the headwind for the first time. Well, it wasn&#8217;t exactly a gale, but it definitely slowed things down and made progress that much harder.<\/p>\n<p>I pushed on and went through the village of Cranshaws, with it&#8217;s picturesque old kirk. It was getting to lunchtime and I&#8217;d not had my picnic yet. Whiteadder Reservoir was close and I planned to stop there, so I had some more fudge to keep me going and carried on.<\/p>\n<p>The sight of the hill on reaching the east end of Whiteadder Reservoir filled me with fear! I&#8217;m sure it is much steeper than the 14% stated on the sign. Or perhaps my legs were beginning to fail. In any case, I struggled to stay upright to the top and only just made it. A stop was definitely overdue, so I pulled into the car park at the sailing centre and unpacked my picnic.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_612\" style=\"width: 650px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.adp-stuff.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/15May15_01.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-612\" class=\"size-large wp-image-612\" src=\"https:\/\/blog.adp-stuff.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/15May15_01-1024x765.jpg\" alt=\"Taking a break at Whiteadder Reservoir\" width=\"640\" height=\"478\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.adp-stuff.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/15May15_01-1024x765.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/blog.adp-stuff.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/15May15_01-300x224.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blog.adp-stuff.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/15May15_01.jpg 1944w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 640px) 100vw, 640px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-612\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Taking a break at Whiteadder Reservoir<\/p><\/div>\n<p>I ate one of my cheese rolls and a banana and forced down some water, and felt incredibly full. In retrospect, maybe I should have hung around for longer to let everything digest, but the sun had gone in and it was feeling a bit cooler, so I decided to get a move on.<\/p>\n<p>I found I could pedal fine along the few flat parts, but the uphills just seemed to get harder and harder. Unfortunately after leaving the reservoir behind there was a big long uphill ahead. The strength in my legs just deserted me and even in lowest gear, I was struggling to make progress up the 6% gradient. It felt as if I had somebody else&#8217;s legs and they were on strike. So I just had to stop and sit down on a grass bank next to the road.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s this fabled thing called &#8220;hitting the wall&#8221;, which some cyclists prefer to call &#8220;bonking&#8221;, where you use up all your energy supplies and simply can&#8217;t go on. It is supposed to be accompanied by dizziness and a clammy feeling, but I felt absolutely fine apart from my legs being on strike. I wasn&#8217;t sure exactly what was going on, but having a rest and eating more seemed to be the best option. So I ate my other cheese roll and the last of my fudge. I&#8217;d actually chosen a lovely place to stop, so waiting there wasn&#8217;t so bad. There were still 25 more miles to go, with some steep climbs so that was worrying, but with just a bit more strength I thought I should be able to manage it, albeit VERY slowly.<\/p>\n<p>After my rest, I slowly cycled up to the top of the climb, then was able to rest my legs for a good long while as most of the remaining 5 miles to Gifford were downhill. There were two steep little uphill sections that I somehow managed to struggle my way up, and you don&#8217;t know how relieved I was once they were behind me!<\/p>\n<p>Once at Gifford, I bought some emergency Mars bars from the shop then went to the tea room for a cuppa. I also ordered a slice of carrot cake for yet more energy. The rest must have done me good, but I left the tea room feeling uncomfortably stuffed.<\/p>\n<p>The hills after that were marginally easier but I was still nowhere back to normal. It was a real slog covering the remaining miles and I wasn&#8217;t really enjoying it. Actually I was hating it! Added to that, the headwind seemed to get stronger and I started to feel chilled. I would have accepted a lift back home in a shot!<\/p>\n<p>Approaching Borthwick, I had one last steep climb to negotiate and could only envisage myself doing it by pushing the bike up. I stopped next to the old school for a final drink of water and looked over to our house in the distance to take some encouragement before getting back on the bike. In fact, I didn&#8217;t find the final climb too hard, and a passing jogger even commented that I was doing well. Thanks for that, it gave me a boost, and I began to feel a little stronger again as I finished off the last mile to home. But strong enough to do another 25 miles, definitely not!<\/p>\n<p>So that was a landmark ride for me, being my longest yet (75.9 miles), with the most feet of ascent (4643 ft) and longest time spent riding (6 hr 9 min) but the &#8220;failure&#8221; in the middle makes it one to forget. Still, there are lessons to be learned and I will be sure to stoke the boilers better before starting and definitely won&#8217;t insist on waiting till lunch time to eat my picnic! As for the 100 miler, I&#8217;m now more worried about it than ever, but at least the route will be flatter, with 1000 less feet of ascent than today&#8217;s run, and doing it with others means we can support each other through the hard bits. OK then, bring it on&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In early June, I plan to join some others in attempting to ride a full 100 miles in one day, for no other reason than to be able to say that we&#8217;ve done it. A bucket list kind of a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blog.adp-stuff.co.uk\/?p=609\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-609","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adp-stuff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adp-stuff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adp-stuff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adp-stuff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adp-stuff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=609"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adp-stuff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":614,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adp-stuff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609\/revisions\/614"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.adp-stuff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=609"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adp-stuff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=609"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.adp-stuff.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=609"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}