Weekend of the 8th of May saw Team Human Science assemble once again at the gates of Bush Park in Teddington. This weekend we were changing the usual long steady ride for something with a little more intensity. I had mapped a route that took us to mid-Wales where my parents live and we set off in pairs to replicate the one hour on - one hour off type of riding that we would be doing during RAAM.

Mark and Jon set the pace and rattled off the first 20 miles while Tom and I settled down in the car navigate for Jess - our numero uno support driver. We were about 10/15 min behind Jon and Mark setting off as we were fiddling around putting the bikes on the roof and then I, (true to form) needed to pee within 15 min of the journey starting! We were then playing catch up and only managed to meet up with the riders at mile 22! Tom and I then climbed on our trusty bicylettes and set off on the second leg of the journey. While Jon and Mark had taken the hard nosed policy of "no-drafting-in-RAAM-therefore-no-drafting-in-training" Tom and I had decided to buddy up and take turns doing hard efforts on the front. This worked well for us and we found an agreed pace fairly quickly and managed to stick with it up to mile 20. Whereupon - shock horror there was no support car to meet us. This threw us a bit as we had gone hard out for 20 miles, thinking that we were going to be finished at that point but now we were having to dig in and keep going until the support car caught us up. Unfortunately we also found ourselves at the bottom of an über hill! We muttered some of our rehearsed self talk / quotes of inspiration along the lines of "suck it up" "man up" and a few choice swear words and put the small chain ring into action. Jon rang Tom's phone when we were half way up and said that they had got stuck in traffic (behind us) and that they would be with us soon.
Half way through Mark and Jon's second leg we stopped for pub lunch and chats and since Jon and Mark don't actually need time to digest their food, set off again as soon as the soup bowls were empty. The next couple of legs of the journey took us through Oxfordshire, the beautiful Cotswolds, up past Ross and Hereford. It constantly amazes me how incredibly beautiful our country is and how little of it we see when travelling A-B on the A roads and motorways. I said when we started this challenge that I was looking forward to getting out an about in the countryside and I have not been disappointed!

Tom and I were on the leg out of Hereford and we were in to flatter territory by now, but we were also starting to feel the previous efforts take their toll. Legs were getting tired and there was allot less chat between us - no breath left for banter! It is hard to describe the relief of seeing the support car 1 mile earlier than our agreed meeting point - Jon and Mark were all set to go and there was no time wasted over changeover. By now it was getting dark and so it was time to practice our night riding and driving. Jess did a fabulous job of sitting behind the riders, hitting the hazard lights whenever cars came up behind and pulling up closer to the bikes. Credit to all drivers on the roads that night, they were all considerate to the riders and gave plenty of space when overtaking. I got back on my bike with 5 miles to go and joined Mark and Jon for the final couple of hills. We arrived safely at my parents just after 10pm a total journey time of 11.5 hours (including all stops). I think Jon worked out the average speed on the bikes to be about 19mph (TBC - Jon?) and then it was time for some hard earned food and rest.
 
My mum and dad had somehow sorted out enough spare beds to sleep the five of us (and no, we don't live in a mansion!) and supper was swiftly followed by bed. Sunday we decided to go for a short walk before lunch rather than do some more hills and walked along the river Wye at Builth for a few miles. On the way back we decided to play on the railway line for  a while (children do not do this at home) but I was safe in the knowledge that there were four trains a day along this line, two in the morning and two in the early evening - we were "safe" at lunch time!  My mum had cooked up a super Sunday lunch and we had to shake off the food coma in order to get back on the road.  After some trauma of getting all four bikes on to the roof and five grownups into a fiat punto, we set off back to London. Tired but happy.