current music: surrender by chemical brotherscurrent mood: chafed and chuffed
it's not to find an image that best captures the dunwich dynamo but this one serves quite well when you realise that what you see is hobby cyclists like me asleep on the beach at dunwich in suffolk at 7am having just cycled 120 miles through the night. for fun.
and that's what i did this weekend. the boys were neatly packed off to nanny w, a packed herself off to scotland for a wedding and i packed myself off to hackney for an 8:30 start to the 2007 dunwich dynamo, or dun run as we cycling enthusiasts like to call it (feel fee to interchange 'geek' for 'enthusiast' if you wish.)
the dun run takes place each year on the saturday night/sunday morning in july closest to the full moon. i reckon there was about 500 of us that pitched up in a park in hackney to the bemusement of the locals and the happiness of the local publican before setting off through epping and loughton and into the suffolk country side. i'll not bore you with descriptions - basically because it was so bloody dark you couldn't see a thing. it pissed down pretty much all the way and, not putting too fine a point on it, i seriously thought i had hypothermia after getting back on my bike in the rain in my wet clothes after a rest stop in some village hall.
but the coldness passed, the sun came up at 5 and the rain stopped just as i arrived in dunwich. my brother in law was there just after to meet me and bring me home (thanks again t) and i was home by 10 in a kind of a dream like haze - partly brought on by the lack of sleep and partly brought on by the euphoria of having cycled for further than i have ever cycled before in one hit and through the night to boot.
120 miles, 10 1/2 hours. well dun me.
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