The Ras na mBan hasn't even started yet..

After a busy day at work yesterday, driving the 5 hours alone to Fishguard did not appeal. I didn’t want to go, stressing about whether or not I was good enough, whether or not I would enjoy myself, what the accommodation would be like…
I (sort of) manned up and got on with the drive. After an extremely dull 5 hours I arrived at Fishguard at 12.10am – early for the time I was due to meet Karen and Steve from GB Cycles. They were delayed as they had to go back for Karen’s passport, so with the time being fairly tight I was asked to be standing outside the car with my bike ready to put on the bike rack for 1.20am. So at 1.18am I was stood in a cold, dark, empty, eerie car park with my beautiful Parlee Z5 Sli. At 1.30am I was still stood there. I called Karen and she had put the wrong postcode in the satnav! They were 40miles away – with only 30 minutes to go until boarding closed. The ETA was now 2.35am and they were probably going to run out of petrol. Shit. There was no way they were going to make the ferry.
Reluctantly under Karen’s instructions I went to see the lady on the Stena Line desk (thinking that there was absolutely nothing we could do about the situation) and emptied my contents of the car in their office so that IF they arrived in time, I could load their car up quickly. They were really very, very helpful and to my disbelief allowed us to board despite being so late. To save time I even rode my bike onto the ferry rather than strap it onto the car roof – felt a bit weird sprinting along a ferry dock at half two in the morning.  

As it happens, I am already having a great time with the GB Cycles team. Line up for the Ras is:

Iona Sewell
Karen Poole
Sandra McKay
Michelle Forster (London Phoenix rider also guesting for GB Cycles)
And me

After lunch where the waiter hilariously dropped both our drinks AND food all over the floor, we all went out for a little spin this afternoon just to get the travelling out of our legs and Michelle’s front mech fell off into her chain jamming it so she couldn’t pedal. We took it in turns to push her the 8km back to the hotel, where we still haven’t found a fix to the problem yet… Fingers crossed she can start tomorrow for the first stage.

The Ras na mBan (women’s tour of Ireland) consists of 6 stages over 5 days. The first will be tomorrow at 5pm and is 65km ‘rolling’ circuit based around Ennis - http://ridewithgps.com/routes/2153061. For race updates follow @rasnamban and for a start list click here.