For my second attempt at a 300km ride I chose a flatter route with better weather. I was very uncertain how long it would take so I'd booked a room at Alfreton travelodge for the Saturday night in case I didn't make it back before my last train. I didn't get a lot of sleep the night before, waking up several times with falling glucose levels. Somehow I managed to persuade Paul to get up in the middle of the night to drive me to Alfreton for a 6am start. A fellow cannon hill cyclist and audaxer, John was also doing the ride.
A fast ride on the outward leg, we arrived at the first control only 20 minutes into the time window. Cake and coffee, cards stamped, and we were off again. It was so flat it was fairly monotonous riding across the fens. We were making such good time I cancelled my hotel booking, I'd easily make it for the last train. Reaching the coast we stopped at a cafe to get our cards stamped and have lunch.
"so what time is your last train" John asked
"about 10:30" I said checking my phone. Scrolling down I realised that this train involved an overnight stop in Nottingham "Okay it's actually 9:45"
Leaving the cafe we continued up the coast to the next control, just time for a pastry from the local bakery before continuing. A minor hypo but John had a well timed mechanical so I reached for the glucose tablets with no additional stops required. A packet of biscuits from a Co-op in Lincoln and we had just 70km left to go. I was counting down the final kilometers. 20km from the end I could feel my pace slowing, John was getting further ahead of me and it was only traffic lights that were helping me keep up. I knew my glucose was dropping, I wasn't going to get to the end without stopping. I pulled over onto the pavement and ate a couple of glucose tablets and one of my emergency flapjacks. We finished just after 8:30, plenty of time to get my train home.
Despite the overnights hypo glucose control was okay for the first half of the ride but I injected too much insulin at lunch causing glucose levels to drop in the afternoon.
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