Dales/W Yorks ride, 6th August, 2022. From Settle to Settle OR to Hebden Bridge/Todmorden

[ColinJ]

Okay - some details tonight!

It became a bad 'ouch' late in the ride because I ate and drank nowhere near enough for a ride with 2,380 m of ascent in 120 km. I was completely conking out after saying goodbye to SoV. In fact, I ended up slumped over the bike halfway up a couple of ramps, and then had to walk with the bike to the summits of those.

An emergency cereal bar kicked in just in time for the last 20 km of my ride home. By then though I had a stiff neck, sore shoulder, and a tender saddle zone!

I immediately fell asleep when I got in - still wearing my sweaty kit, and not even having had a drink or snack. When I woke up 30 minutes later I had a shower then a meal. I feel a lot better now.

My bathroom scales showed that I was more than 2 kg lighter than when I set off. Nearly all of that loss would be due to dehydration.

I must eat and drink more on rides!

 

[ColinJ]

Oh, yes - we DID have some nice sunny spells. I will post a couple of pictures tomorrow after I have selected, cropped, and resized them.

 

[Sea of vapours]

Glad the cereal bar kicked in Colin. I shall leave you to choose whether or not to describe just how woefully inadequate your food intake was today ....

On future rides, with permission, I may suggest you eat / drink both earlier and more frequently !

A very good day and route, I thought. I'll also comment further once I've eaten, washed, and quite probably slept.

 

[Buck]

Definitely Ouch! You need to drink plenty and get some food in you little and often. I rode just 28 miles and around 850m this afternoon and finished a large bottle easily. With your distance and climbs you’ll have needed way more!

Glad you’re OK (ish)now. Keep hydrating tomorrow as well!

 

[ColinJ]

I am going to be sensible for once and go to bed before midnight when I am tired, i.e. NOW!

 

[Domus]

I too find it difficult to eat and drink enough, so my Wahoo allows me to post alerts. Every 30 minutes it chimes and DRINK is displayed and stays on the screen until clicked off. Every 60 minutes I get the message EAT SOMETHING.
It certainly helps

 

[neil_merseyside]

I don't drink as much on a ride as I should, but on rides 60m+ I do need* food often, on imperial centuries I like food every 25miles - so yes Colin your York-Hull was a shocker (not really 😄) but I did (and I still have) the body reserves to cope, oh and of course a bag of food obviously .
Looking forward to next months York-Hull as I now know what to pack food wise, or to splurge more at the marina (or do both obviously ).

Skinny people (proper skinny and not just skinny looking) need to be more careful, that's why I don't worry too much as I only look skinny...

*need could just be plain old WANT in my case😄

 

[ColinJ]

I still have a headache from dehydration and am trying to refill! I have had enough of drinking water for now, so I think I will soon make a big pot of coffee. (I'm sure that someone will now post that coffee isn't good for rehydration, but I fancy it, so ya boo! )

Here are a few photos from the ride...

My bike with Pen y Ghent in the background.

You can see a sign on the far right of the picture. It says 'CAR PARK HONESTY BOX' and asks for £0.50 for a short stay or £2.00 for a long stay. I thought it was probably put there by a cheeky landowner trying to charge for what should be free parking at the side of a public road but I now wonder if they meant in the field behind the gate? SoV opened the gate to go and have a pee behind the wall so I know that it was not locked. Still odd though - why pay to park in a field when the roadside spaces are free? I imagine that quite a few people DO park up there because one of the footpaths up Pen y Ghent starts nearby, and in the other direction there is one going over Fountains Fell towards Malham Tarn.

Carrie and Sea of Vapours on Storiths Ln above Wharfedale

Looking back along Storiths Ln. We had just done a fairly steep climb up to this position.

There is a fair amount of cloud in those photos and it was sometimes like that during the day, but often the clouds parted and we had bright sunny conditions. There was a wind blowing all day and I have to apologise to @Sea of vapours for slowing him down a lot and therefore inflicting a long late evening slog home on him, into the wind, and probably not finishing until after sunset?

Still... a very good ride though!

(What I say every time...) I must get fitter before the next one!

 

[Buck]

Even the bike in that first photo looks dehydrated!

It does look a lovely rout even with some challenging climbing!

 

[ColinJ]

It does look a lovely rout even with some challenging climbing!

It was a brutally hard start - approximately 480 m of ascent in the first 16 kms***! After that it got really easy for 38 km, largely downhill to the foot of Storiths Ln. Then it started to get tough again, but at least with some relief between the climbs.

*** Imperialists - 1,575 ft in 10 miles!

 

[geocycle]

Well done all! I love that road past Penyghent, not least the knowledge you’ve got up the hill and have the mad descent to Halton Gill then Littondale to get equilibrium back. Awesome.

 

[Sea of vapours]

It was a brutally hard start - approximately 480 m of ascent in the first 16 kms***

A start which Colin himself proposed; just for clarity
For anyone who knows the area: off the train in Settle then straight up Langcliffe Scar and left at the T junction onto Henside Road in order to get back to Goat Lane, the road to Halton Gill, via the vicious little 20% descent and ascent.

I still have a headache from dehydration ...

Do you know how much you actually drank, Colin? I very much wasn't even trying to keep tabs on your fluid intake, funnily enough (maybe next time though !).

I have to apologise to @Sea of vapours for slowing him down a lot and therefore inflicting a long late evening slog home on him, into the wind, and probably not finishing until after sunset?

It was 2140, when I got home, so 45m after sunset. Not a problem. I brought a 'big' light this year for precisely that eventuality. It was 54km and slightly over 1,000m of ascent, after I left you so I had no chance of getting home in the light, given that we parted at 1830.

Most importantly, I seem to have drawn a long-haired, Manx cat playing with ... maybe a giant, knitted snail.

 

[ColinJ]

A start which Colin himself proposed; just for clarity
For anyone who knows the area: off the train in Settle then straight up Langcliffe Scar and left at the T junction onto Henside Road in order to get back to Goat Lane, the road to Halton Gill, via the vicious little 20% descent and ascent.

I did incorporate the 1.8 km warm-up along 'Highway' to Langcliffe! (Mind you, even that started with a steep ramp... )

Do you know how much you actually drank, Colin? I very much wasn't even trying to keep tabs on your fluid intake, funnily enough (maybe next time though !).

I reckon about 1.2 litres until we stopped just beyond Oakworth for my emergency cereal bar, about 0.2 litres there, and about 0.3 litres after I left you.

That would have been enough for me in the past, but judging from the weight loss, I probably needed at least another litre yesterday!

I think the changeable weather didn't help. At times it was very warm, increasing my perspiration rate. At other times, it felt quite chilly in the wind so I zipped up my jersey and gilet, and rolled down the sleeves on my base layer. If it had been consistently warm I wouldn't have bothered with the base layer and would have spent most of the ride with the zips down. Oh, and the compression sleeves on my legs probably didn't help either. I remember that we discussed on the previous Dales ride why I wear the one on my undamaged right leg... Vanity! It might look a bit odd wearing both in warm weather, but it would VERY odd only wearing the one on my damaged left leg!

 

[ColinJ]

Point of order: @Sea of vapours - I just saw your Lunacy Challenge post... We didn't actually go to Haworth - it was Oakworth that we passed through!

 

[Sea of vapours]

Not far off two litres then. I had about 1.4 litres all day; half that in the last 50km. I was pretty cool all day though, and it was certainly cooling down considerably when I finished. I suspect the somewhat paltry food consumption had a lot to do with your fading later on in the day !

There were some very good roads in that bit from Addingham round to Gargrave where I'd not been before. In particular, I liked the road from Oakworth to Laneshaw Bridge, across Keighley Moor I think, and the section after that, over an assortment of moors, one of which is indeed Elslack Moor, was very good too.

Point of order: @Sea of vapours - I just saw your Lunacy Challenge post... We didn't actually go to Haworth - it was Oakworth

True, I almost put 'Howarth-ish' on that. Thing is, I know where Haworth is and Oakworth is less recognisable as a landmark place ...