![\"\"](\"http:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/IMG_20161220_062735.jpg\")
<\/a>The beautiful sunrise in Ooty<\/p><\/div>\n
Yesterday, Amit Goyal, a fellow rider had lent me his spare bottle. It was one of the most useful things somebody had lent me in the entire ride. I need at least one and half litres of fluids in forty kilometres, roughly the distance between two support stations.<\/p>\n
A few people formed their own group and gathered around a veteran rider, Srinath Rajam (aka the coach). He was taking them for a different course altogether. The organisers noted their bib numbers so that they would not be attended to by the official support staff for the day.<\/p>\n
<\/a>Srinath Rajam planning his own detour of Nilgiris with ten more riders.<\/p><\/div>\n
Nils gave a small briefing about how to do technical descends. After a while we were off to a staggered start (bunch of 20) escorted by a four wheeler for the first ten kilometres.<\/p>\n
Todays course had four small hills to traverse. To an amateur (and a beginner) like me, the climbs, if not brutal, were exhausting. If I had to finish the course, I had to be slow and steady. I did not wait at any of the support stations for more than 10 minutes. Just before support station 2, there was a tea stall and most riders had gathered around to have some tea. I did not have the luxury. Instead, I went ahead and bought two bars of chocolate from the next town for my on-bike food.<\/p>\n The roads were too good. On top of that, there wasn’t much traffic either.<\/p><\/div>\n This view is from the base of one of the brutal climbs.<\/p><\/div>\n Every time I had fun descending, I kept reminding myself that I would have to climb the same hill on my way back.<\/p>\n I think I had the fastest lunch of all these days. It was already 1:00 pm. By my calculations, it would take about five hours to get back. I also saw Srinath Rajam\u2019s group moving further ahead in some other direction.<\/p>\n En route to the lunch point at Thiashola, I had seen clouds all around the neighbouring mountain. While returning, these clouds fast approached our route. There were occasional drizzles. I just kept my pace and passed support station 3 (erstwhile, support station 2) and reached support station 4 (erstwhile, support station 1). I did the recommended stretches, filled my pockets with biscuits and headed for the excruciating 25 km climb. This was the same downhill I had enjoyed at the beginning of today\u2019s ride.<\/p>\n Clouds covering the neighbouring hill.<\/p><\/div>\n My strategy was simple – no matter what the speed, do not stop. Even if I had to get off the bike to rest, I walked while chewing on a biscuit. Clouds had surrounded the hill completely; visibility was reduced to 100 metres.<\/p>\n Only the nearest trees were visible. A fellow rider, Mayank, was about 100 metres ahead. He wasn’t visible at all.<\/p><\/div>\n By the time I was at the hotel, I was tired and cold. Experienced riders enjoyed the route.<\/p>\n Since Jamie Anderson was one of the riders, the organisers had asked his to give a talk regarding training and biking. His talk was focussed on the people who were on the wrong side of 30s and had a day job and a family to support.<\/p>\n Jamie Anderson sharing his approach to biking.<\/p><\/div>\n This is what I took away from the talk – if I have to get serious about biking, I need a power meter, a heart-rate monitor and an indoor trainer.<\/p>\n You can watch his TED talk here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Before the round trip I woke up quite early and felt rejuvenated after the much needed rest day. The weather was also very good and the sky was clear. Yesterday, Amit Goyal, a fellow rider had lent me his spare bottle. It was one of the most useful things somebody had lent me in the … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2626,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,48],"tags":[479,551,547],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-sauvik","4":"post-2631","6":"format-standard","7":"has-post-thumbnail","8":"category-biking-cycling","9":"category-travel","10":"post_tag-ooty","11":"post_tag-thiashola","12":"post_tag-tour-of-nilgiris-16"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/12\/IMG_20161220_103453.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2631"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2631\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2715,"href":"https:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2631\/revisions\/2715"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sauvikbiswas.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\nUps and downs<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/a>Bad weather<\/h2>\n
<\/a><\/a>A briefing about training and nutrition<\/h2>\n
<\/a>