Day 3 (continued) - The Finish Line!!

Photo 17: Cycling over the Slieve Bloom Mountains

Photo 18: Jason recording his personal best average time

Photo 19: Our team at the finish line ... 500 miles done!

The second half of day 3 had some more challenging climbs but the number of teams around us was thinning as we found ourselves amongst the leading vans. We all had some good rides and several times found other riders to slip stream which definitely helped keep a fast pace going as you were getting tired towards the end of a ride.

My fourth ride started half way up a big climb. Rich had done the first half towards the end of his ride and we weren't sure how much more there was to reach the top. It was a long climb with some really steep sections which you had to get out of the saddle for. The top had some fantastic views across the countryside and I had a long decent all the way down!

Paul did his next ride then Jason. Rich was out next and going well until he skidded off at a roundabout doing a right turn. Rich got up quickly and carried on but the roads were all very wet now and it looked like we'd been lucky and missed the storm but in missing it we hadn't appreciated how wet and slippery the roads had become.

The mileage in the last round was hard to judge as the course didn't take a direct route to the finish line, presumably as they needed to do some extra miles to get to the 500 total. Rich did the last solo ride and his gear cable snapped so he could only get to half his gears. We stopped the van a couple of miles away from the finish line and we all then joined him on the bikes for the last ride in.

It was a beautiful feeling coming in. It had been a hard 3 days cycling but a lot of great scenery and while we were all tired we knew we'd raised a lot of money for charity. Another Challenge complete!!