.JPG) awesome report Mike, I love it Rob
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 Thanks for sharing Mike,sounds like you had yourself one hell of a epic ride.Very well done to you and thanks to you and all the other SDW double nutters for giving me more inspiration to give it a go ONE WAY. E = mc2 where E = Energy (in Equilibrium), m = Michael, c = Cotty and 2 = The Double.With that as your theory you were never going to fail.Nice one
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 Mike, Congrats on the record! Great feat and great article (although at one or two points I wondered if you were still a little delirious!)  You mentioned you recorded the journey on GPS, which made me think of something... At http://www.opencyclemap.org/?zoom=13&lat=51.02732&lon=-1.22773&layers=B000 you can see that on this map, the route for the SDW (regional cycle network 89 apparently) is incomplete at the Winchester end. I wondered whether you could use your gps log to complete the route? I can explain how if you're interested... if not, perhaps others who have done the whole thing could contribute GPS tracks? Openstreetmap is kind of like the map equivalent to wikipedia - made from user contributions and free to use in all kinds of ways you can't with things like Google maps (which will never have the SDW on it anyway.) You can even load it into your GPS  The cycle map is just one of the outputs from www.openstreetmap.org data.
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it's all there, record breaking ride yet all the ingredients of a fantastic (long) day out.
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 Amazing ride there Mike and great write up! Dave FSR 1, full GPS route for the SDW is available here, also the log from when I did it is available on this page (at the bottom). You're welcome to post the info to OpenCycleMap (the log may already be in there, as someone asked for a copy to put into OpenStreetMap a while back).
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Thanks very much, I'll get onto it when I get home The map should be updated next week sometime. I'll probably add the water stops to the map too.
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So… it’s last Friday 7.20ish, I’m riding up from Warnford, the sun has recently set and it’s beginning to get properly dark. I’m feeling pretty pleased with myself as I’d set off from Eastbourne at 8.30am that morning and, with luck, I’d be in to Winchester (my home town) before 8pm. Mind you, I’m also fairly knackered. My 46 year old body hasn’t taken kindly to the extended abuse it has received and my pace is not exactly electric. I stop to go through a gate, happen to glance back and see the flickering of a set of bike lights coming up the hill behind me. Someone out for an evening ride, I assume. This seems a pretty safe assumption when, at the next gate, I look back again and see that the lights are quite a lot closer. Fresh legs, of course! If that person had also ridden 90 odd miles of the South Downs Way they wouldn’t be catching me up quite so fast… ...Two miles later I stop before the gate by Love Lane, do a quick time check and open the gate to continue on my way. At this moment, the rider behind appears from around the corner so I hold the gate open and let him through (and get a nice acknowledgement). I think nothing more of this small event until an RSS feed from BikeMagic catches my eye: “Mike Cotty does SDD in 19h 52m 26s”. As I read the article, it slowly dawns on me that the rider behind me (and then in front) was not a local out for an evening jaunt after all. And that person hadn’t ridden 90 odd miles like me. Oh no, that person had ridden 190 miles and, to my tired eyes, still looked pretty damned fresh. Mike – you might or might not remember that particular “gate opening” but, either way, congratulations on a mighty impressive achievement. Just remember that without me it might only have been 19h 52m 28secs…
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 Just tidied that post up for you, Jon
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 Awesome, big respect.
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It was nothing, I just had to click a couple of buttons... ;-)
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heh
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Haha,funny Mike.
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 you must have some wild old times in BM towers Mike
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 Mike – you might or might not remember that particular “gate opening” but, either way, congratulations on a mighty impressive achievement. Just remember that without me it might only have been 19h 52m 28secs…
Hi Jon, I remember that perfectly. Thanks so much for being on the trail when you were. I could see a rider in the distance and it really helped to have a little carrot out front to try and catch in the closing miles. You know how it is, kids get carried away sometimes and no matter how the day has gone you've always got to try and catch the rider ahead.
Nice one on your ride. You picked a stunning day for it!
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 Awesome ride, great write up. Big congrats all round.
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Excellent - you sum up perfectly why we do endurance events.
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' It was nothing, I just had to click a couple of buttons...;-)' Haha, yes alright Mike, well done!
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