Dunwich Dynamo 2009

This weekend has been one of the longest and among the more memorable ones of my life - I thought I'd jot down a few notes about it as I'm bound to forget it all.

For a while I've been planning on doing an event called the Dunwich Dynamo which involves riding the 120 miles from London to Dunwich through the night. That was scheduled for Saturday.

Friday

I took Friday afternoon off work to look after Lily while Clare went to watch a Blur gig in Hyde Park. We went to Christchurch Park where we played on the swings and slides, had an ice-cream, fed the ducks and chased dragonflies.
Once home I got her fed, entertained and then to bed. Once I had the house to myself I turned the stereo up to 11 and listened to the new Therapy? album (No, I wasn't pretending to be Andy Cairns and anyone who says I was is lying), this is something I don't get to do too often and one of the (very) few things I miss from bachelorhood ;-)
I then had a Wire Season 1 marathon (how good is that show?!), watching the last 3 episodes back to back and getting to bed latish.

Saturday

To give Clare a bit of recovery time, I began Saturday by taking Lily and my bike off to Dunwich in the car, where the car would be left for me to get home in after the ride. Once there I placed Lily in the bike seat and set off for the nearest train station (about 5 miles), stopping along the way to feed some cows. Lily had never been on a train before but has been intrigued by them whenever she's seen them. She enjoyed the train ride, but seemed to think that we were sitting still and the world was moving past us and kept asking where the trees were going.
Once home, Clare made up a picnic and we went back to Christchurch Park where we spent the rest of the day; repeating most of what we'd done the day before, plus having the picnic, chasing a ball, eating more ice-cream and watching people set up the stages for the annual 1 day Ipswich music festival.
In the late afternoon I got everything packed for the bike ride, finished prepping the bike and headed off to catch the train to London with a mate (Chris). On the train I bumped into someone I vaguely knew from work about 10 years ago, he coincidentally was doing the same ride.

Saturday night, Sunday morning - The Ride

We got to London and headed off to the start point, London Fields park in Hackney, where we met up with a group of my biking mates (Phil, Ben, Richard, Mark, John, plus a few friends-of-friends). The ride's a pretty informal affair, you're given a sheet of A4 with directions on it and can set off as and when you like. We hit the road around 8:45pm and prepared to battle the London traffic.
London's roads struggle to cope with the number of cars that use it, so adding around 800 bikes into the mix is never going to be pretty. As such, we were stuck at a snails pace until we got to the M25 and a lot of the going was fairly treacherous with a few drivers objecting to bikes having the temerity to be on 'their' roads.
Once through Epping Forest and into the Essex country lanes, leaving London and the sunset behind us, we could pick up the pace and put a few miles between us and the start.
We knew that there were differing skill levels within the group and it had always been the plan that we would find our pace and split into smaller groups as the ride progressed, and once out of London John and a friend of his dropped off the back.
We'd planned to split the ride into 20 mile sections, having a rest stop at the end of each, it was at the first of these that Chris decided to hang back and join John's splinter faction, and where I realised that it was now definitely too dark for sunglasses.
As the night went on we passed many Essex towns and villages, hitting some of them just as the pubs were emptying for the night and some (mostly) pleasant banter was had with the locals as we passed.
The 40 mile refuelling stop came and passed fairly swiftly, but the next 20 miles to the half way point were starting to hurt a little and me getting a puncture shortly into this stretch held us up a bit.

The halfway point is in Great Walderingfield's village hall, which kindly opens and provides food and drink to the riders. We'd been warned before the race that the queues here can be huge and sure enough they were massive; as such we'd all prepared our own grub - other than topping up our water bottles we were pretty much self-sufficient. We took our longest rest of the evening here (probably about 30mins) and despite the warm dry evening (approx 15C at 1am) we'd started to cool down to the point where our short sleeved tops weren't seeming such a good idea! We decided to head off as we were and see if the next few miles would warm us up enough to keep the warmer layers stowed in our packs and sure enough, 10 mins down the road we were sweltering again.

Thanks to the magic of energy gels and drink supplements we were managing to keep a decent pace and keep cramps from our leg muscles - although seeing the sign saying "Ipswich 9 miles" did make our beds seem like a more tempting place to be.
By now we were well into Suffolk and surrounded by wide open fields and passing through pretty little villages and market towns and other than one sadistic taxi driver in Needham Market this was the longest we went without seeing any cars.
As we approached Framlingham, our final rest stop, the sun started to rise and each of Suffolk's hills (yes, it does have some) started to hurt more and more. On leaving Framlingham our spirits were at their lowest and we were at our most tired, I seemed to be yawning continuously for the first few miles. But some banter and competitiveness kept us moving until finally the end was in site.

All in, we covered 120miles in 8hrs 55mins, of which 7hrs 13mins were spent in the saddle and my trip-computer showed we'd held an average speed of 15.5mph.

Much like at the half-way point, the beach cafe owners opened bright and early for us foolish people who'd ridden through the night, and when we arrived at 5:40 there was already a moderate queue out of the front door. A short while later we were sat outside, overlooking the sea, scoffing down a huge fry-up.

A few souls, braver than us, were having a swim, while others slept on the beach. The old, white-bearded, man walking his dog on the beach must have been surprised that his, usually secluded, daily routine was being intruded upon by all these people and was perhaps wishing he'd chosen to wear something other than his manky grey dressing gown!

Just as we were leaving, a couple of hours after having arrived, and much to our relief, we saw Chris and John arriving. It was at this point that the heavens decided that it had been dry for long enough and the rain came down with a vengeance. I'm guessing they got rather wet in the queue for a fry-up which was now stretching around the car-park!

It's fair to say, that despite not breaking any world records or anything, I'm suitably smug/chuffed with myself for completing this, and despite riding regularly it is without doubt the toughest thing I've ever done.

Sunday

Following a quick drive home I slept for 3 hours and then had to resume parenting duties. We set off out to see the music festival in Christchurch Park where we met up with a few friends and where the training diet of high-carbs and no-alcohol could be thankfully swapped for a high-alcohol and no-carbs one!!! Oh and not forgetting to get Lily her 3rd ice-cream of the weekend :-)


If you've read through all that;
a) well done to you
b) why would you do that to yourself?