Another blistering hot month over here, and another 200k completed.
I took a very long break after I DNF'd my 1300k in March and am still slowly rebuilding my fitness, so I wasn't very ready for the BRM200 on Sunday. With a 6am start, there was less time before the sun came up and the weather became hot and humid, and with the initial ~90km of the ride being mostly flat, I tried to take get the best out of the early hours and get as much distance as possible before the sun came up. Ran into a very early snag though - my Garmin was misbehaving and kept failing to calculate the route at 89%, which was problematic because the recalculation efforts consumed more battery life and I only had navigation up to 89%.
Shortly after the first checkpoint at 82.5km, I took a quick break at a nearby petrol station for breakfast and to refill my water. Fortunately it was still relatively early, my stomach hadn't acted up (yet) so I could at least get some energy and nutrition in before the grueling part of the ride began. On the bright side, this was a route that I was pretty familiar with, at least until the next checkpoint, so I did not have to rely on navigation and shutting that portion off should help conserve battery life.
Reached the second checkpoint at 137.3km sometime after 11am, and it was already hot and most of the route was under the sun with very little to no cover. Around 20km from there, stopped at a convenience store for more food and water. Managed to down half a loaf of bread, but that was it, but I figure that's better than nothing.
By the third checkpoint at 175km, my stomach was pretty much shot to pieces even though I tried to keep my efforts slow and easy - but the hilly routes made it tricky to do so. Felt like my upper thigh muscles may cramp at any moment too, I figure that's because I haven't ridden long distances for quite a while. The longest I have gone since after my break was 70km, so I'm nowhere near peak level in terms of fitness. Anyways, at this point I'm also starting to look at alternative means of navigation, and decided to just do it the old-fashioned way - by reading the cue sheet.
So cue sheet navigation was doing well most of the time, except for that one bit near the end where I accidentally skipped a left turn and went on a little detour. After a while and realizing I'm not reaching any roundabout that I'm supposed to see, I stopped and checked and realized my mistake, so that added another couple of km's to the ride.
Finished at approx 4:45pm, so a grand total of 10h 45m elapsed time. Not that great, but at least a good indicator of where I'm at in order to prepare for another 300k next month.