Unable to take my foot of the gas for fear of being dropped. An uneaten Turkish delight- a sure sign I was struggling on the Lap of Laois

The 125km Lap of Laois was fast and furious.  The organising club went to the front and set the pace. It was fast.

Have you ever been frustrated when a fictional detective ignores the seemingly innocuous bit of trivia that is clearly crucial and you spend 400 pages waiting for the ‘world’s greatest detective’ to work out what was clear to you from the start? 

‘Siblings? Well he had a twin brother but he died years ago while exploring the Amazon. Very sad, they never did find his body’

Well that is happened to me this morning. I overheard two people talking at Registration.

‘I was with the lead group until the cut’. At the start line I heard

‘The food stop is about 15km  before the cut’ and then the riders in the chaingang began to talk in terms of distance to ‘the cut’

Later I learned that ‘The Cut’ was a 7km climb buried in the middle of what I thought was a flat ride.

I had a head start as I left the food stop before others and cycled the 15km to ‘the cut’ on my own and into a headwind. I climbed ‘the cut’ solo and crested the hill with 2 riders just catching my wheel on the descent. The three of us rode together flat out for the last 35km. Thankfully it was all downhill with the hardest part being the 8km circle of Port Laoise before arriving back in prison.