Congratulations to Simon McNamara

A year overdue, and despite the plan being to do it with his brother Chris, a previous Hall of Fame inductee who was sidelined by a fractured hip, nothing was going to stop Simon!

In Simon's Words

Originally planned as a 50th birthday challenge last year, the idea was to do the ride later this summer with Chris, unfortunately his crash last weekend scuppered the pans. The weather was good last week so I decided to potentially have a go as a self supported (no assistance).

I made some adjustments to my bike on Friday, fitting the suspension seatpost (try to protect my fragile back a little) and a new mech so that I could run a 10-51 cassette.

I left home at 8:00pm on Sat night and spun out to start the ride at the bottom of the climb that runs from the river Adur up to Truleigh hill, the weather was great and I was trying to ride conservatively to pace my ride.
A quick stop to adjust my saddle height felt much better, I then saw a beautiful sunset around Ditchling Beacon and then saw the moon appear around Lewes, I found riding the night hrs a bit disorientating with a sense of being very alone! I arrived in Eastbourne just after midnight and faffed around a little, re-organising my snacks from framebag to my pack. I was surprised at how tired I felt so early in the ride, when in theory I had been taking it super easy, this definitely played on my mind for a while. I guess in reality, my body clock was saying 'I should be asleep'

Heading back, the temperature started to drop a little and I was now riding into a head wind which was picking up, daylight started to appear around Truleigh hill and I picked up my re-supply pack that I had left the afternoon before at the top of Steyning Bostal. A quick re-supply and a can of coke and I was back on my way, however, every time I stopped for more than a couple of minutes, my legs felt terrible, from here on in I tried to minimise the stops and my faffing.
I cracked on onto a headwind towards Winchester which felt pretty sapping, by this point my back was aching a fair bit, at every gate, I would walk 10m or so to stretch it out a bit.

Once through QEP and up Buster Hill, I felt like I was pretty close to Winchester, however the last section seemed to go on a while. At the turnaround, I took a pic, necked a coke and bought a few chocolate bars from the local store, it was great for morale to pick up a tailwind, ride the climbs (of which there are a lot!) at a pace that I could maintain and then just tick the legs over where I could.

Once back past QEP, I seemed to get a bit of a runners high as the finish was in sight for the last 2-3 hrs, ticking off the final climbs and I was feeling really good, eventually getting back to where I started the night before with an elapsed time of around 20'ish hrs, my partner Sharon was there to great me and we headed for a quick pint and some snacks that weren't jelly babies. The SDW DBL is a Butally hard but truly epic day on the bike, I loved it! (at times).
It's still a plan to do the ride again with my brother, probably now that we have both ridden it, we have a good idea of what works and what doesn't.

For my set up I rode my Mason Bokeh with Shimnao GRX 12 speed 1x, a 38t Wolf tooth Oval ring coupled with a 10-51 cassette, I fitted a pair of HUNT 650B Adventure Carbon Disc's with 2.1 Travail Rutland tyres. I had an Exposure Trace R and Race light on the front.

I rode with a USWE adventure pack and had a frame bag for extra snacks, arm warmers, chain lube etc etc.

For nutrition, I had 2 x bottle made up with a 250gm carb / fructose mix - 85 x jelly babies - 10 x stroopwaffle - 3 x Stykr rice bars - 5 x Stykr Gel 50’s - 1 mars Duo - 1 x Snickers Duo - 1 x Yorkie double - 1 x Boost - 4 x mini pork & pickle pies -2 cans coke & around 6 litres of water.

Simon