Pat Jones Memorial

With winter and early spring being such a wash out, a lot of us were looking at ways to claw back those missed Saturday and Sunday spins and so the search for sportives to take part in is at the top of our agenda every week. One of these that caught our eye and was a new one for me was the Pat Jones Memorial in Edenderry Co. Offaly which was being hosted by Team 905 cycling club. The course looked a relatively flat 100km and the forecast was for a strange yellow ball to appear in the sky so entries were sorted and bags were packed. A quick flurry of texts and suddenly the Scott Orwell numbers doubled with both Louise and Grainne deciding to join us. We’d also been in contact with some members of Lakeside Wheelers along with some other friends who were also making the journey, so we knew that we’d have a nice group for the day.

Louise Keane, John Twomey, Muirna and Grainne Coughlan

Given that the only silverware that’s guaranteed into our house this year is the Randonneur medal we made the decision that this would be this year’s target so we parked up in Enfield and cycled the 20km to the start to make up those pesky extra kilometres. Despite not being involved in the competition, Lou and Gra were very good and joined us for the cycle over which meant that we arrived at the start with plenty of time to spare. Sign on completed and a quick cup of tea later, we lined up behind the faster group and headed off at 10am sharp. We settled into a relevantly brisk pace of about 31kpm and efforts in both the club league and women’s league slowly left our legs. After a very close shave with a car which took us on the inside, we made the decision to allow the faster group to go on and a more leisurely group formed which contained mostly the 4 Scott Orwell riders and the remaining Lakeside Wheelers crew.

Arriving into the feedstop at the 45km mark, we discovered we were not that far behind the faster group as could be seen by the amount of food remaining. I hadn’t seen this selection of food since the last Mount Leinster and so a plate of sandwiches along with some other goodies were grabbed and we sunned ourselves on the nearby obligatory GAA pitch.

With full bellies and empty bladders, we left the stop and were unfortunate to get caught up with a larger group of riders which over time splintered our original group. This meant that for the last 30km or so, we rode back in towards the finish in depleted numbers with some of the group ahead of us and some behind. Arriving into the finish came as a bit of shock as while the spin had been advertised as 100km, my Garmin read 90km so this would have implications later on.

Our original group reconvened at the finish and congratulations were passed around. To ensure we were able to make the spin back to the cars in Enfield, a few of us topped up our sugar levels with an ice cream and following our thanks to the organisers, we began the 20km spin back to the cars.

Of course with the sportive being only 90km, it meant that we had to find an additional 10km to make up the magical 140km and so after arriving back in Enfield, we continued our spin for a further 10km to make up for the lost distance. During this time there were a few comments about the makeup of the Randonneur medal and the hope that it was made of gold or at least some precious substance. At that point, chocolate would have done for me. Distance reached, we headed for the cars and back to Dublin after having a very enjoyable day.

Many thanks for the Team 905 club for a very well event and hopefully we can get a few more to join us next year.