Brevet Pyrgos 2015 (+ Arx Olimpia)

Brevet of Pyrgos, a 200km route with moderate mountain section. Probably one of the easiest of all brevets in Greece - good one for a rookie like me.
I wanted to do this one for two reasons mainly:
1) first 200km ride ever for me and since it was not so mountainous it seemed like a good start.
2) part of preparation for 60km run next week, since my foot hurt and I didnt want to overdo it with running.

And since it was fairly close from Patra, there was a huge group going there and I had great company for all the ride :-D

0,0km at 5m - Start from city stadium in Pyrgos. Fisrt 50k were flat and on national road. Normally I would consider it extremly boring and actually a bit dangerous, but in a group of ~300 riders, it was actually quite fun and a good warmup for the rest of the ride.

47,0km at 20m - In the village Varda, the route left the national road to the right and on to local smaller roads with almost zero traffic. First ~13km of this section was very mild climb. Then quite fun up and down section until village Tragano. The last 10km before Amaliada were disaster! Full wind ahead, quite strong and completely flat area with no views at all :-/

86,0km at 40m - First Check Point in Amaliada. We stopped for some food, coca-cola and toilet. Also we gathered together again as a group. As a result we spent almost 25min there which was a bit stupid since we needed a warmup again :-P
First 15k of this section are pretty flat with some few uphills and downhills, but nothing major. Then a bigger and more demanding climb all the way to Panopoulos starts (next CP). This is were our group started to break. I managed to stay with 'medium' riders, which meant for me quite a big effort.

130,0km at 580m - Second Check Point in Panopoulos. Again we set down for quite a long time waiting for others to gather again. But after lots of food and 30min+ waiting we decided that it's time to leave, otherwise we will just stay there forever :-D
Continueing with road 111 from Panopoulos with some up and downs in direction to Lampeia, we tried to do one minute changes but few of us started to feel fatigue and the changes did work out. Anyway, we continued pretty well until turn in direction to Ancient Olimpia.

143,5km at 750m - Turn to Ancient Olimpia. A bit of fun descent but very soon again long, boring and continuoes tiny uphill. The grade is maybe not even 1% but after 150km it's quite tiring.

156,0km at 720m - Finally descent. This time longer and really fast! All the way down to Lalas and later to National Road Tripoli-Olimpia.

174,0km at 150m - At entrance to national road, we took a detour from brevet's route in order to pass through Ancient Olimpia and the village itself. Few selfies and stop for yet another energy drink. We set off back to the national road to rejoin the brevet's route and continue to Pyrgos all the way with national road.

201,3km at 5m - back at the stadium! after ~8h45min elapsed time, out of which more than 1h were stops (sthg to consider for the next time!)