Day 4 Complete

Today was our 4th day of the ride and was the day that I 'hit the wall' so to speak!! We set off at 6.38am with bright blue skies, and midges trying to bite every inch of us!! We got a good speed up straight away as there was virtually no wind and pretty good roads. We travelled the length of Loch Lomand along the A82 again. The Loch looked stunning. There was very little wind so there were clear reflections of the surrounding mountains on the water. We travelled through the small town of Alexandria and followed the route down towards Glasgow. We were getting a good average of about 16mph until we found ourselves a little lost, with the Garmin Sat Nav saying we were off route. We crossed the Erskine Bridge over the River Clyde and had to again check the maps and iPhone gps to find our way onto our originally planned route. We were then slowed down even more by the numerous traffic lights every couple of hundred meters (felt like my daily London commute to work!!) The road surfaces got absolutely appalling. There were so many craters and the surface was so rough that all the jolting was really hurting my bad hand and arm. I was having to cycle a lot just with my right hand on the handlebars. My left shoulder and neck were also completely ceasing up!! We finally got out of Glasgow and on our way down the A726 towards Strathaven. Our average had gone down to around 15.2mph and the road surfaces certainly didn't improve! It was about 10ish and had got really hot. We were both wearing a winter base layer, a cycling t shirt, rain jacket, 3/4 length cycling shorts, overshoes and 2 layers of gloves! At 6.30am that was fine but I now felt like an oven and was really overheating!! I took off a load of layers but had nowhere to stash my rain jacket so had to keep wearing it. We got out into the scenic countryside and the surroundings became much flatter than the mountainous surroundings of the early morning. At 11am, our 60 mile point, we stopped for our 2nd break and had a much needed flapjack. We were both feeling the strain of the awful road surfaces, which were slowing us down terribly and making everything hurt!! The road wound up and down a lot and going up some of the hills we were slowed right down to about 8mph. This meant that instead of reaching the campsite by about half 1 as we'd expected, we were still over an hour away. I started feeling really lacking in energy and we had no food left. We stopped at 70 miles for a quick breather then soldiered on. 4 miles before the campsite I couldnt go any further without an energy boost. I was completely out and was feeling really shakey and dizzy, snaking around on my bike! We stopped and called our support vehicle and Pete's Dad came out with some much needed ham rolls, mars bars and more drink. We sat and recovered for a bit before cycling the last few miles to Abington, finally making the campsite at 3pm!! We'd cycled 88.77 miles - Our shortest day and yet it took us 8hrs 38mins! Our average was 14.4mph which considering the palava of the day, we thought was pretty good! We had a load of pasta too back at campsite and I had a special sports recovery drink. 

During the afternoon we had a rethink of our days planning and decided we needed to schedule our breaks around time cycled instead of mileage, and take more food with us to keep us going. We also arranged with Pete's folks for them to come and find us towards the last 10 miles or so of each days ride to check we were ok and drop off any more food that we might need. And finally we decided that far less clothing was needed now we were quite far south! 

Hopefully tomorrow will turn out better and more enjoyable! Today was by far the toughest day and a huge endurance test. An early night is needed methinks!