The Hampshire Hilly 100 - a day early! - by Chris

A Confirmation service to attend and the last match of the Premier League season at Molineux meant I had no choice but to do my long weekend ride on Saturday.

The selection of a route was an easy one. I had signed up weeks before to do the Hampshire Hilly 100 mile sportive on the Sunday which I would now miss, so why not ride the course the day before?

And so I did, all on my own, in the rain and wind. Naturally, none of my usual group were interested in joining me, they were either in the actual Hampshire Hilly the next day or had other long Sunday rides planned.

The Hampshire Hilly route came within 3.5 miles of home, so just shave 7 miles off the course and I would have a perfect 100 mile ride. After a quick call to Garmin support I downloaded the route to my GPS and was very pleased with myself - all I had to do was follow the arrow on the screen. Little did I know this assumption would be short lived and within 5 miles or so the GPS would be telling me to do a 'U' turn and a few miles later would keep pausing and then switch off all together! The impact of this, in addition to my annoyance was that I would cover more than 100 miles.

In the end, while out on the road, I deleted the route from the GPS and carried on with the general map and time/speed/distance functions. I did however manage to follow the Hampshire Hilly route very closely, although I ended up well of course in Stockbridge at one point and circumnavigation of Winchester took a while. The rain here at it's heaviest.

Anyway, my route basically made a big loop around Winchester to the south and then back home via Alresford, Micheldever, Overton and Hannington.

I ran out of drinks after about 75 miles and had to wait until I reached Overton and a busy supermarket, where I received some strange looks in my wet mud stained kit, to replenish by bottles.

The last long climb up to Hannington required me to focus on other thoughts as the rain came on heavier again. The GPS at this point was showing 90 miles but my legs and in fact whole body told me it was longer.

I finally rolled into my drive after over 7.5 hours in the saddle. My GPS showing 7:08 for 100 miles, much slower than previous weeks. I calculated I had actually covered at least 110 miles taking into account the fact I hadn't stopped when the GPS was either off or paused. Good training though and character-building stuff. The total climb was 6500 feet, the greatest climbing total yet.

A welcome rest from long rides next week but more competition with a 10 mile time trial on Wednesday and 3 up team time trial on Sunday. I will let the others tell the story of the actual Hampshire Hilly!