Formidable 222

Cycling...

The craze for cycling just got bit higher, but the fear was at large as the days grew shorter towards the event...

How things started? A year ago, the madness for cycling got in, Myself and two of my friends decided to go on for regular cycling. The start was good. We installed Strava and the level of motivation was pretty high. Obviously, by looking at Strava users it just boosted to 400x :-P! There are a lot of damn good cycle a.k.a bike riders from Chennai. A few of them really motivated us. I really want to name a few, all these names are their profile names in Strava. Shun Athi, Elango, Noel... And lots of them. These guys really motivates. The way they ride, its true mad-bliss!

Okie, so now lets enter the main story part ;)

As I stated above myself and two of my friends(Sasank & Vivek[upcoming ;)]) we are tri-athletes.
Cycling got us into Triathlon mainly. We knew swimming, but there was literally no cycling and running practice. So we decided to pace up on those. But still we don't  practice running ;)

We went for cycling quiet regularly last year, then the laze hit us and we ended up rolling up inside the blanket and this year closer towards the end of the year we decided to resume again and we started cycling again. But the pace of practice was not really good as last year, still, we did.

And on one fine day, Vivek sent me a chat, and wats the content??? 222 Ride, two states, TamilNadu and AndhraPradesh. The event really shook us and we took it pretty seriously! Just few weeks back we were talking about Brevets and finally we ended up getting an opportunity to hit one!

We planned to practice 100kms as a prequel to the main event a week before for the 222, and it was quite successful. But there was only one change, instead of Sasank it was Ganesh one of our other friends, who came with us for 100 kms, he too was interested in 222. 100 kms was pretty exhausting and tiresome because of opposing wind and hot sun. We completed that in ~ 6 hrs 10 mins. But sadly, after that Ganesh dropped out. But actually, quite a saving move from his part :D u'll know why soon...

Then D day approached, we got up by 3 AM and got ready in a quiet good and comfortable pace. We had decided to reach the event starting Point (Track & Trails, Kodambakkam) by car. And so we did and reached the place by 4:40. The event was said to kick off by 5. We unmounted our cycles and got ready to hit our longest ride ever. So far we have done 4 - 5 100 kms. But the maximum was 115 kms. Which was completed as a part of last June or July's Gran Fondo (An event in Strava).

We cycled and reached the starting point, and the crowd present was really scary. All seemed like damn good pros, around 70% it was filled with road bikes, 20% with hybrids and 10% by MTBs. We were really hoping to ride well along with them. Photos were being clicked, lots of chit chat around, it was really a nice live crowd at morning 5. We prepared our app to start tracking our cycling pace and route and lots of other stats. The app is really good! All set and the event kick offs... The time is 5:03!

We started with a damn really good pace, the average cruise speed was highest ever, our goal was to hit all pit stops at least 30 mins before the deadline, there were 7 pit stops and all placed in a gap of 30 kms with 2 hrs to cover the distance between each. The weather was really friendly, chill breeze to soothe us as we exhaust. The road was also quite empty, since it was early morning. We cruised at our best and reached the first pit stop by 6:15. Volunteers were busy distributing snacks and hydration stuffz. We stopped there for around 10 mins and was lucky to get caught in a snap.

We resumed our ride and tried to keep up the pace as we rode in the first phase, the route was pretty scenic (towards Periyapalayam -> Uthukottai), there were agricultural fields along side with fog spread over like a slim blanket. It was quite a blissful view. We weren't really tired, it was really an enjoyable ride. Around 7:30 we stopped for a water break and continued in a few mins,  I was really concerned that we must reach the next pit stop around 8. All these pacing was to evade the sun as much as possible.

We reached the second pit stop (Uthukottai), around 8:10, and it was quite satisfactory. At the first pit stop, we didn't have anything. Here we had bananas, chiki, guava and filled water. And I sprayed a bit of Volini, as my right leg, knee had started showing symptoms of pain. We kicked off from there too in another 10 mins, we were rolling by 8:20, this stretch was really strenuous ride. It was full on the gain in elevation and bad road, this road goes to Sri City via Sathyavedu. We have cruised in this road earlier, so we knew this stretch to an extend. We rode till that point and took another water break. The sun as almost up high to hit straight on the riders. So we had to really find spots to take breaks. The pace really started to reduce in this stretch towards thrid pit stop. But both the sides along the road was almost uninhabited. Finally, after constant elevation gain, we were able to reach the third pit stop by ~ 10:20. We took some comparatively long break here. Drank and filled up water, had bananas and I sprayed again Volini on both my knees, as it was feeling a bit of painfully odd. We had to give our names here, and we were in the list in 80s :-o

@Third pit stop

I checked my brake, since I felt lots of drag in the ride in the last stretch. Then after few mins of rest, we started rolling again back on the track. The sun was almost at its best, wide open lands, we were near Sri city, an upcoming corridor for manufacturing and IT hub in Andhra Pradesh. The road was pretty good from there. The place almost empty. There were hardly any vehicles on the road here. We got confused too in the route we had to take. Then one more guy accompanied us and we proceed thru the same way we were in. That road hooked us to Central Expressway, the road which connects this Sri City section with the main NH road.

We took the left towards NH and the distance mentioned there was ~ 8 kms. Oh man that 8 kms were almost like riding 3x of the original distance. Companies on both the sides of a six lane road, but super dry land with short trees and sun almost over our head and damn resisting wind. With hardly few spots to rest, this section almost dried our entire energy. Both of us had almost dried up in this stretch.

Somewhere in the second stretch

Finally, around 11:30 we reached the end of this stretch which is NH towards Sullurpeta, which we have to take now. Before hitting the NH, we took a small break and had water. It was another 18 kms from here to our U turn point. The total distance from the third pit stop to next one was ~ 32 kms.

We started pedaling in the NH and crossed Tada. It was 10kms from there to Sullurpeta and 3-4 kms from there to Sriharikota U turn point, which is the fourth pit stop. But from Tada to Sullurpeta, it took really hell a lot of time. The sun was at its best to really slow and dehydrate us. We took almost 3 breaks in this stretch.  A few riders had a flat tire and they were fixing that. Really felt bad for them.
But seriously, we couldn't lend our hand to help them out, because we really don't know any fixing mechanisms. Meanwhile, in this stretch Vivek's cycle was dragging a lot and he was really getting exhausted.

After the leap of faith push, we reached the Sullurpeta Junction, and there were lots of riders gathered around and relaxing and hydrating themselves. One of the organizers was asking everyone to resume the ride back as soon as they have refreshed. It seems there were some conflict between the organizers and the cops at that region. So it wasn't really a nice ambience to stay there to take some rest.

We didn't even have water, so we had to get some from a nearby fruit seller. He was really kind enough to give some. We filled and started back. Alas, the half way point done! Time was 12:45 PM

By now we were in a mindset that we will abort the ride, since both were suffering a serious drag and the sun was also really mad. It was very much of a mental task hereafter for another 4 hrs. So we ended up deciding in calling Sasank to pick us. We started from that point and rode around a km and reached a shop. And rang Sasank. He had just woke up from a nice sleep after dropping us at Kodambakkam in the morning. Now again another trouble for him :( and in the meanwhile My phone was almost dead!

We stopped bikes and stood idle for a while and inquired shop for food, but sadly it was super dry! Only water bottles were there. Bought two bottles of water to freshen up and drink, did that and sat outside in a nice breezy spot. The place was comfortable enough to sleep too. And we caught some sleep for a while ;)

Finally, the 222 turned out to be disastrous and unsuccessful, but we learned a lot about the techniques of cycling, how to be prepared for a long ride, and met a lot of new faces etc...
We completed 115 kms in ~ 6 hrs, and there was a slight happiness about that. It was comparatively far better than last longest one.

But the ride was memorable and really gr8! A great thanks to Track and Trails to conduct this event and apologies and a heart full of sorry to bunk in between. In future we will make that we never do that!

After 2 hrs, Sasank was there for the rescue and we back in the car with our cycles mounted...

Off to Guduvanchery!

Route Map: