600km Challenge! Can Dave Ride Across Wales and Back in 40 hours?

Last time Dave tried to finish the 600km Bryan Chapman Audax it didn’t end well: he was sick in a hedge and had to bail. This time he has a very shiny Lauf Úthald to do it on: will that be the difference between success and failure?

Find out more about the Lauf Úthald: https://www.laufcycles.com/product/uthald

This video includes paid promotion on behalf of Lauf Cycles

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⚫️ In this video

0:00 Introduction
0:47 Part 1: Chepstow to Kings YHA
3:55 Part 2: Kings YHA to Aberdyfi
6:53 Part 3: Aberdyfi to… the finish?
11:01 Ride recap
18:52 Outro

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6 years after first trying the 600k Brian Chapman orax and making a horrible mess of it I’m back for another crack this time on a shiny L boot hold will I end up being sick and a hedge again somewhere in Wales or is this a year I make it back to cheptoo all be revealed so stay tuned on 48 I’m heading towards chipto over the old s Bridge uh I’ve got my bike and everything I could remember that I need which from previous experience won’t be everything but it will be probably enough feeling a little bit nervous about tomorrow the weather looks good um I got a couple of mates to ride with who are similar Pace to me I mean it should be fun uh until it’s [Music] not straight first control Honeys we’re on our way climbing up on the way to askk and with my wing people got Rachel got Justin in the background there last time I went off like a train with the fit LS it didn’t end well this time Justin was still eating his beans on toast when everyone left so uh we’re on our own and we can set our own pace and it’s rather [Music] nice first big time of the day this as easy as it’s going to get yeah [Music] [Applause] than kind [Music] sir tell which of us had uh sensible scrambled eggs on toast and which of us had a full English I was [Music] thinking I saying ad justing earlier but I couldn’t remember any of the bits from BR Clos can’t remember what happened and I think this is why I haven’t raised it from my memory just a long old slug up the a470 rubish [Music] [Music] [Music] things have taken a [Applause] turn the very finest fish and chips [Music] now we’re in the [Music] mountains right I’ve made it to Kings which is uh about 200k in So a third distance and really on a road like this although it sounds strange to say it it’s as soon as you can take stop of how it’s going and actually I think it’s going pretty well we started behind the main pack we set our own pace we’ve been keeping to that I’ve got a spreadsheet we’re on time the next section we’re going out along the coast we go to barmouth Across the Y which is really beautiful uh through Harlock and Beth and then we’re into snowdonia and there’s some big climbs to do before we get to meni that’s 300K and then we have to do another 100K to get to our sleep stop at abdui and that’s where I fell apart last time so hopefully this time cuz I’ve taken it easy I’m going to be good [Music] so big moment we’re about 260 K in we just passed through bed gallert we’re in snowdonia just at the foot of the penny pass and this is the last big climb on the way out get to the top of this it’s downhill all the way to meni apart from the little bit that isn’t downhill that I could really have done without last time but we got about 4 or 5K fairly steep climbing to do and then it’s nice long descent [Music] looking forward to this [Music] right a long night section now how many hours 5 hours it’s going to be uh dark and cold and there isn’t anywhere to stop but you know it might be fun it’s not going be fun is it here we go then back over the bridge off to Avy [Applause] [Music] well we’re about 10K to go to the sleep stop now this has been a long long SL I am looking forward to sit down something to eat it’s been over 4 hours just riding through the dark it’s very cloudy there’s no moon it’s been Misty as well it’s been hard to see at times we done it happy gang us back together I’m very tired good morning well yeah not a lot of filming from when I arrived red last night we were a little bit uh the worst for wear softened up by the 4 and 1/2 hours through the night along the coast which wasn’t very flat at all in the end Le seem didn’t seem it anyway but had a couple of hours sleep and it’s the morning and it’s sunny and the legs feel okay I’m going to get some food down me and we’re going to carry on and I think feels like we’re going to make it this is 400 400k P point so with 2/3 the distance just got to get all the way through Wales and over the gospel pass uh to finish so let’s crack on the L has been great it’s comfortable it’s quick I’m really glad I put my uh Arrow bar risers on cuz I’ve been using that position a lot I was in it for about an hour overnight but it’s a great bik for this kind of stuff and I re I’ll be able to smash out the last 300K no problem [Music] so almost 24 hours of riding time let’s not count the faff let’s come to this this is the final well not the final hurdle hopefully the final Challenge on the gospel pass is 455 me of vertical climbing up to the gap between hey Bluff over there and Lord harford’s knob no sniggering at the back so before I finish just a bit of a recap on the ride now when you’re doing something that you’ve previously failed to do there’s always a point at which you think actually think I’m going to make it this time and for me well overnight I was feeling reasonably confident where we managed to get to the sleep stop cuz I didn’t manag to do that before but actually it came for me in nighting we put 100K into the second day and suddenly we only had 120k to do and 9 hours to do it in and I thought I’m pretty much going to do that that’s going to be fine so that was brilliant and from then on we’ve just been tapping out the miles really not been going particularly hard but we’ve got plenty of time in hand and I reckon we’ll finish in about 38 38 and 1/2 hours I mean all could still go wrong but it’s a lovely day the view is incredible and I’m going to enjoy this last bit of the climb up to the [Music] top thank you very much [Music] that was amazing come on well done so strong on there and you’re done D if you could just autograph there please certainly congratulations on finishing it thanks mate yeah really pleased there uh pleases me wow Dave how are the legs the legs un surprisingly all right yeah yeah not bad so you completed it I completed it my total time is 38 hours and 18 minutes of which about 27 hours was actually turning the pedals and the other 11 hours were General faffing and quite a lot of eating I’m not surprised do you know how many calories you got through I have no idea I didn’t finish the ride any any Li of my started we how did you know that oh we we ate everything so we started off with a full English about 3 hours in and it pretty much just went downhill from there there was chips there was crisps there was sweets there was soup and Curry and just pretty much yeah and Mr tombar 49 p in some spot in the middle of Wales A lot of them there’s a reason to go to the middle of Wales how was the rest of the middle of Wales other than the bargains I mean I think on a week K like we had with the weather that we had there are very few places in the world that are as beautiful to ride a bike it it was unbelievable the views from the gospel pass over the Lanny M Mountain Road along the coast road to harloc round through Abid Divi and like up into up into the hills just so beautiful and I’m always amazed at how few people there are out there it seems like just Baron yeah although although a lot of the time we were getting passed by ATS on the Saturday because it was the fish and run that day and funnily enough a couple of my mates rocked up in one and they they messaged me to say they seen a BCM Rider and it turned out they were just a mile down the road so we we met them at the co-op in CL for some food yeah nice clearone a bottle of coke yeah bril you were lucky with the weather and very lucky how was the bike then I mean like I I can’t say anything bad about it really for the whole ride it was it was faultless and just a really comfortable really stable machine to do a long ride on super super efficient I never had any problems the only problem I had is when I’m tired you know SRAM how you change you press both to go from Big it’s a very very simple concept isn’t it it is a very simple con the only thing you got to remember is which chain your ring you’re in yeah yeah so for instance if you’ve already thought you’re going to change down for a clim get to the clim and change into the big ring you get a lot of trouble I can see well that is High Praise indeed because if I’m on a bike for more than 4 hours I absolutely hate the thing um you can check out Dave’s full build using the video up there but since then since we last spoke has anything changed on it um so for the ride was back into race mode now I’ve taken everything off it but back on the ride it was pretty much as the video uh I had some Arrow bars on there in fact I made them uh higher put risers in so that was a position I could hold more comfortably and I used that position a lot we were bashing into a headwind for like the second half of day one and through the night I was down on those a lot so I could uh have a little nap along the way we we don’t condone that time don’t do it kids and instead of the zal bager had a tailfin one because there happened to be one knocking around that I could borrow which turned out to be excellent other than that pretty much as you saw it yeah and it worked really really well I had enough storage I remember to charge nearly everything so that good yeah so Hammerhead power oh we talked about the power meter yes did you use it I did use it so um I set it up to um give me a lap every hour and that would just give me a heads up on what my average power been and I know from experience that like riding a long way I want to keep it at about 50% FTP MH so about 150 watts for me and most of the time it was that that’s that’s taken it pretty easy obviously I mean it’s not it’s not 100 50 wats all the time you know you’re going harder up the hills you’re cruising at times but that tends to be about the Benchmark for me tried to keep to that and actually it worked out really well for me I felt really really good nearly all of the way around the last hour through the dark to abidi was a slog and we were really tired it was about 3: in the morning mhm and that was hard but actually when we woke up in the morning we had 200k left to do it looked achievable and then we we knocked another 100K for the next leg and then suddenly it’s 120k in 9 hours and at that point yeah you know you’re going to make it mhm and the pace kind of went out of the ride at that point has is fair to say there was a little bit more stopping at petrol stations Anda crisps and we had the gospel Pastor go over which is a you know it’s a tough climb but you can do it slowly and then that’s fine and the views from the top were amazing and there was an ice cream van perfect perfect go well I actually did a little ride between chapso and mouth and uh it took it took about 20 people coming the other way for me to realize that it was the event that you on um everyone seemed really Smiley were you smiling at that point I was smiling at that point because at that point you know you can stop riding in about half an hour so you know you you’re over it by then really you just want to get it done um but it’s a fantastic event it was really well organized it takes an army of volunteers to do it I mean there are loads and loads of people and also there’s three events on the same day so there was the 600 that I’m doing another event that’s two 300 so you get a longer sleep in meni and then another one which is 3200s so you stop at the 200 points sleep there do a lap up to meni come back sleep again and then go back they’re still going so they all they’re all done they were they were having a great time it’s like yeah I’d rather that one yeah I think I might try that one next year but big thanks to uh will from aex club Bristol all the ax club Bristol guys for for putting it on it was a fantastic event and the most important question how did the uh the color go down how did the color go down yeah it was it was a popular color people like an iridescent uh greeny purple MH very nice and I thoroughly recommend it in in the Welsh Sun yeah looks beautiful hopefully it looks beautiful in more places than just the Welsh sun because that’s only for two days a year but it does look really good so it sounds like you had a pretty good time I had a pretty good time it was great what’s the next challenge then well the next challenge um I don’t know if you’ve ever used V view but I use that to do my yearly stats and it has this thing where it puts up stars for the rides you’ve completed this is the first ride that I’ve done over 7,000 M of climbing when you get that star it puts up a new thing that says well you haven’t done 8,000 MERS of climbing 8,000 why stop there that’s almost an Everest it’s almost an Everest and an Everest is something that I have been considering genuinely I’m not sure that I’m capable of doing it I don’t I don’t know well if you get 1,000 likes will you do an Everest yeah okay there you go I’ll try away I’ll try I’ll do it on the road literally I’ll do it on the road outside my house up and down that it’s 100 100 laps you’ll be you’ll have to be careful cars pulling out in front of you down there but that might be the least of your worries that’ be the least of my worries like 200k in yeah when I’m when I’m a husk of myself and would you would you do it on the loud oh definitely yeah it’s a great B I mean this this build isn’t quite as light as the other build that I’ve I’ve tried but it’s light enough the gears are nice and low I’m super comfortable maybe I’d put some lighter wheels on it for an Everest but other than that I don’t think you’d really need to change much so there you go that was my 600 km ax experience on the LA utal if you got any questions about that r or a axing in general or this bike stick them in the comments below we’ll get them answered for you don’t forget to uh like the channel for more great content like this and an everesting video that I might hopefully not have to do I’m not going to do it that’s for sure we’ll see you next time