Rhaeadr Kona 100, June 2003
Just thought I'd pen a few lines about today's K100 whilst everything is
still fresh (and bleeding...!) in my mind.
3 of us, Shane, Chris and myself bombed up to Rhaeadr in Mid-Wales
ysterday afternoon in glorious balmy sunshine. A fairly painless trip
ensued and by 22:00 we'd already eaten lots of free pasta, pitched the
tent, fettled bikes and found a pub. A peaceful and serene nights sleep
followed (only punctuated every 7 seconds by the bloke in the tent next
door snoring his head off...).
This morning dawned hot and sunny - a pleasant day for a ride! Roughly 550
people had turned up to do the 100km event with a further 250 for the
shorter 55km ride. By 09:30 we were lining up behind the pace car which
would lead us out over the first 7km to the start of the firetrack and at
10:00 on the dot we went. The sound of nearly 800 pairs of knobblies on
tarmac never fails to impress! The course was a mixture of fireroad,
singletrack (up and down) with bits of road linking it all together.
All went swimmingly well for everyone for the first 20 mins until I had
a reminder of the stopping power of a pine tree having completely failed
to take a corner. Relatively undamaged, I jumped back on and pedalled on.
Not far behind were Chris and Shane working their way through the pack.
The theme of fireroad climbs, the occasional deep puddle, stream crossing
and singletrack continued until 2hours in when, inexplicably, my front
wheel folded in two. Consigned to walking, I watched Chris and Shane speed
past.
Cutting a long story short, by the time I'd donated my saddle to someone
who'd broken theirs and found a marshall, I had lost a little over half an
hour. By some miracle however, there was a spare wheel and a spare saddle
(well, OK, there was someone's bike there that was cannabalised...) at the
marshalling point/maintenance area so it was game on again! 45 minutes
down and time to get the head down...
Meanwhile, the demons of mechanical failure hadn't been satisfied. Oh no!
At the second stream crossing, Shane suddenly found he couldn't pedal any
more and that there was a strange lack of bits of drivetrain on his bike.
One mangled rear mech, one twisted mech hanger spelled, sadly, the end of
his race. With some fettling he managed to convert the remains of his
drive into a singlespeed and limp home.
One piece of firetrack merged into the next and things started to pass by.
The occasional gathering of onlookers, simultaneously applauding whilst
wondering if we needed to be committed, provided some incentive. Finally,
after what seemed like quite a long way, the '10km remaining' marker
loomed up ahead. And the remaining 10km was on small, narrow country
lanes. A slight sting in the tail followed as we needed to leave one
valley and climb into another. Both Chris and myself by this stage were
into the 'balls-out' mindset and we eventually arrived (separted by some
27mins) back at Rhaeadr rugby club, the event centre.
Final times were:
Chris Jones 5hrs 03mins
Bart 5hrs 29mins (45mins downtime)
A fantastic event - with some very resourceful folk in the marshalling
stations. So, who's up for the remaining 2 K100 events in Llanwrtyd Wells
and in Corwen?
Many thanks to Shane for driving us up there - unlucky you couldn't finish
mate.
Bart Hallmark
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