Gbduro21 - day3.0

Better deal with house matters and catch up what happened since I last wrote. In the small hours of the morning we had our second rider reach checkpoint 1. Mark Beaumont arrived to the delight of Angus as he’s now got a buddy to speak to.

For the statos amongst us, Marks time for the completion of Stage 1 was 44hrs 48mins. Which makes Angus’s time of 35hrs 40min even more mind boggling. Official times will be published in due course, as I only got a C in higher Maths.

A eagled eyed dotwatcher mused that he must’ve been in need of a good wash so he's headed on down to the river. A river - what the Welsh refer to as ‘a bath…’ 

I shouldn’t mock however, as we up here in the Highlands are still awaiting a 4th channel on terrestrial tele. I hear the English have 5 channels now and that the films on it are belters! We can only but wait and hope.

The battle for third in looked to be between Philippa and Jaimi as they couldn’t be separated for most of the day. However, in the dark of night Ollie Hayward put in a late charge to fly in under the radar! It was nail biting stuff to see which of our leading women would be next. It was Philippa Battye who managed to wrestle free from Jaimi Wilson reaching the checkpoint shortly before her nemesis for the best part of 2 days. A note to the riders, remember your timestamp thingwy please! So I can keep track!

We also had our first scratch of the event unfortunately. Our youngest rider of 19, George Bramwell made the sensible call to call it a day. He started to struggle taking in food and would have done himself even more damage had he tried to push on to make the cut of point at CP1. A wise head on such young shoulders. Every cloud has a silver lining however. He was fundraising for Papyrus - a very worthy cause during the GBDURO21, raising at the time of writing, nearly £3000. Almost £1000 over his target. So head on over to his IG account where you will find a link to his just giving page and a bit of background to the charity. Find him at @georgebramwell_cycling

Well done in getting this far George, a lot of riders never even made it to the start line! Will be great to see you back in the future. Rest up, stay strong and thanks for joining us fro GBDURO21.

Over on our Race Radio, most of the chat is now resorted to food. Can only mean the riders are now burst. You know the score. Its like at the end of a ride when you start fantasising about what you’ll have when you get in from your 3 hour ride. Now imagine that ten fold… that’ll get you somewhere close to the mindset of our riders. Ride, eat, sleep (for some), poop, then repeat. However, not necessarily in that order. 

Will update you guys later as we’ll get a flurry of riders finishing Stage 1 throughout the day.

I’ll leave you with this picture for now. Adam Colvin didn’t manage to find a Spar for hours so he had to look for an alternative means of sustenance…

[Photo Credit: @tomiczkovva]

Catch you later
​Deadpool