One of my objectives this year was to see if I had it within me both physically and mentally to get around the Paris-Brest-Paris ("PBP"), a 1,200km ride to be completed in 90 hours, next being held in 2011. It's the "big one" to all long distance cyclists, around 7,000 people take part each time. The format that most people do it in is ride 400km (circa 20 to 25 hours), sleep for a couple of hours, another 400km, sleep, another 400km.
This was the first time I had entered a 400km ride and an important step to seeing whether PBP was viable. It was the furthest I had ever attempted (in a single day) and the first time I had attempted to ride through the night. I have now answered the question about whether PBP is viable and discovered a number of things along the way. The ride left Hailsham at 9am on Saturday. I got back again at 5.30am on Sunday. That's "quite a long time to be sitting on a bike". However, I then went to get some sleep, breakfast, bath etc and poppoed by the finish at 11am on my way home - there were still people rolling in - now 26 hours in. That's gotta hurt.
My voyage of discovery established the following:
- 400km is a shockingly long distance. It's getting on a bike in London and riding non stop to any of Sunderland, Le Mans, Newcastle or Liege. In 21 hours.
- whilst there were 20 people on the ride, the disparity in pace is so great that soon everyone is riding on their own. I spent 21 hours on a bike and spent a total of 3 minutes of that with another rider. Spending 20 hours and 57 minutes just turning the pedals, on your own, no-one to talk to is astonishingly boring.
- I thought that riding through the night and into the morning day break would be a tranquil and serene experience - no, that's also astonishingly boring.
- riding the whole day in constant drizzle and grayness is also really boring. I did see a small patch of blue sky around 7pm, but that had gone again by 7.05pm.
- I need to be inspired when I ride, usually by the scenery. Grinding up a tough mountain through the clouds and the snowline is so uplifting that it often brings me close to tears of joy. Riding all through the night on some flat boring road just brings tears of boredom. Better places to be, better things to be doing.
- I can now give ratings to places to try and get some sleep:
i) Grass verge 1.30am - 1 out of 10 - wet and passing motorists will stop and see if you have fallen off and are lying unconscious by the side of the road. Managed a 2 minute snooze.
ii) Against a tree - 2.30am - 6 out of 10 - dry under the canopy but a bit lumpy. 10 minute catnap
iii) In a traditional wooden bus shelter - 3.30am - 9 out of 10 - private, dry, wooden bench. 15 minute snooze
- If you get caught short in the middle of nowhere and need to "do as a bear does" then a dock leaf does not made a suitable wiping implement
- Riding through town centres at 3am, the police give you a long hard stare like you're some sort of weirdo. This is probably an accurate assessment.
- If you mainline coke and caffeine gels to get you through the night then when you hit the sack at 6am you are still pretty wired for a few hours yet and sleep is not forthcoming. I did manage to fall asleep at the breakfast table though. And again at 10am, and 11am, and 12...
The main thing I leant though is that whilst I love zipping round a 200km ride and have generally enjoyed the couple of 300km rides I've done I just don't find longer distances enjoyable. I'm glad I did it, it's nice knowing I can do the distance but I wouldn't do it again. Could I in theory have got back on the bike after the 2 hours sleep I got and done another 22 hours on a bike, and then done it again - physically I'd like to think the answer is yes but mentally it's almost certainly no and I do know for sure I wouldn't enjoy it. If I had ever dreamed of doing PBP then I could say the dream was over. But it was never a dream, just a thought so whilst I know I won't be doing PBP next year I do know instead you'll find me grinding up a big mountain (or three...) somewhere in the world, having much much more fun.
Tuesday 11 May 2010
Wednesday 14 April 2010
My longest ride yet: full of self doubt and loathing
The Heart of England, 310km. April 10th.
Spending the previous couple of days in the US and coming in on the overnight flight on Friday morning before a Saturday ride may seem like less than ideal preparations for the longest ride I've ever done but the tiredness, lack of sleep and general bodyclock weirdness seemed to fade away after 12 hours in the saddle, replaced by an almost complete shutting down of all sensory perception, my whole body seemingly not connected to my mind.
But that aside, this was honestly one of the favourite rides I've ever done!
This ride is well regarded on the various chat boards as being really nice - and turning up for a 6am start at some school hall on the outskirts of Cirencester I was taken back to find around 50 other people there who seem to think that cycling just shy of 200 miles is some sort of fun. More worryingly I heard one of last years riders reporting that he finally got to the finish last year at 2am, some 20 hours of riding. That didn't bode well.
Leaving Cirencester just pre-dawn was lovely, with myself and Ed leading the pack out for the first 20km or so along quiet country lanes. I don't recall seeing a single car for the first hour - but we did see the sun breaking over the horizon and fields with deer grazing in the morning mist, just lovely. The pack, seemingly unthankful for us towing them for 20km unceremoniously dropped us up the first hill. Ed had a good enough excuse, he was doing the ride on a single geared bike and couldn't make it up the steep hill. My excuse is that I'm rubbish at climbing steep hills. Big long draggy mountains I can do, short sharp english hills I can't, never worked out why not.
This was one of those perfect cycling days, no rain forecast so you could leave all your wet weather kit in the car, the start of springtime and dry clean roads so you can change your nasty winter tyres for super smooth free rolling summer tyres, barely a breeze to disrupt your rhythm and neither too hot (though I still got sunburnt) or too cold. The route whilst going near many of the big towns in central england (Warwick, Coventry, Daventry, Birmingham) never went through any of them, a lot of effort had clearly been spent on planning the route though tiny village after tiny village. I spent almost all the ride just thinking "this is just perfect".
This perfection was rudely tweaked when at the 200km mark some bloody giant hornet (OK, wasp, bee, gnat etc, delete as appropriate) decided to kamikaze itself into my neck, stinging me before I even realised what was going on. I can think of one or two places on your body worse than the side of your neck to be stung but in terms of pain factor it was pretty much up there. It bought tears to my eyes and a few blue words into the afternoon air.
200km is my normal ride distance and this alas started to show - after around 230km I began to get really fatigued, my head sagging and full of fuzziness. At the 250km mark there was a short stretch of 20km or so on a busyish road where you needed to concentrate not just on you but also on the traffic and here I began to realise how much I was struggling with lack of alertness and concentration and wondering just how safe I was on the roads. At this point the self doubt and loathing also kicked in - not doubting that I could finish the ride but doubting / loathing my ability to do anything any longer than this one. I went through a good couple of hours of "I want to be at the finish and go home RIGHT NOW, bollocks to all this training etc etc". This seemed to fade away for the last hour when we turned off the main road onto a quiet country lane again, the finish was (metaphorically) in sight and I was now just a liability to myself and not the stream of traffic that had been coming past on the main road.
And so finally after a ride time of 13 1/2 hours, 12 1/4 of which were in the saddle, 310km were duly dispatched at an average of 25 km / hr. For around 2 hours I hated the fact that I liked cycling, but for the other 11 1/2 hours this was my favourite ride ever.
Monday 22 March 2010
You really wanna race?
March 21st, Haslingfield 200km
The numbers on each ride continue to steadily pick up as spring arrives, yesterday was (after a long cold and miserable winter) a lovely spring day, starting off with shirt, thermal jumper and Gore-Tex jacket and ending up in just shirt sleeves, just lovely.
Tried in miserable vain to hang onto the fast group but knew as they kept cranking the speed up and up that my time there would be short lived, finally giving up the ghost after around 20km - and that was pretty much the last time I saw a single soul on the road until the very end. Always strange how around 50 people can do the same ride on the same roads starting at the same time but over the course of 9 hours you only see a small handful of them.
This was a pretty bumpy course, leaving south of Cambridge and heading 90km due east with a nice tailwind. Alas then coming back 100km due west into an unwelcome headwind, cycling on your own makes it even harder as no group to shelter in and share the work.
The last 20km were flat and (with a tailwind) fast, speed up over 35km / hr, cruising along - but as I was minding my own business this trio of other riders cruises up behind me, they had been using me for miles to pace themselves up. I'm entirely relaxed about this and pick the pace up a little to match their speed and form a group of four, intentionally sitting on the front to do the work, that's the polite sociable thing to do. Alas one of the group had other ideas and picks the speed up further, going past me and heading out on his own. Red rag to bull etc etc, I was having none of that and duly dispatched him out the back, not even bothering to look back to see whether he was still hanging in there. All very childish but rather satisfying.
Ride: 205km in 8 hrs 20, average 24.5km / hr.
Through the 1000 mile mark for the year. Next up a 300km ride.
The numbers on each ride continue to steadily pick up as spring arrives, yesterday was (after a long cold and miserable winter) a lovely spring day, starting off with shirt, thermal jumper and Gore-Tex jacket and ending up in just shirt sleeves, just lovely.
Tried in miserable vain to hang onto the fast group but knew as they kept cranking the speed up and up that my time there would be short lived, finally giving up the ghost after around 20km - and that was pretty much the last time I saw a single soul on the road until the very end. Always strange how around 50 people can do the same ride on the same roads starting at the same time but over the course of 9 hours you only see a small handful of them.
This was a pretty bumpy course, leaving south of Cambridge and heading 90km due east with a nice tailwind. Alas then coming back 100km due west into an unwelcome headwind, cycling on your own makes it even harder as no group to shelter in and share the work.
The last 20km were flat and (with a tailwind) fast, speed up over 35km / hr, cruising along - but as I was minding my own business this trio of other riders cruises up behind me, they had been using me for miles to pace themselves up. I'm entirely relaxed about this and pick the pace up a little to match their speed and form a group of four, intentionally sitting on the front to do the work, that's the polite sociable thing to do. Alas one of the group had other ideas and picks the speed up further, going past me and heading out on his own. Red rag to bull etc etc, I was having none of that and duly dispatched him out the back, not even bothering to look back to see whether he was still hanging in there. All very childish but rather satisfying.
Ride: 205km in 8 hrs 20, average 24.5km / hr.
Through the 1000 mile mark for the year. Next up a 300km ride.
Tuesday 16 March 2010
The 'Uts Feb / Mar 2010
A series of 3 rides on successive weekends, all of them from a collection of bike huts (or 'uts, in Essex) in Ugley, Essex. These typically mark the arrival of the common or garden cyclist who hangs up their shoes in October, returning in March (to be distinguished from the fair weather cyclist who only comes out in May...) and it's nice to see the numbers on the ride rise from 20 ish over the winter months up to around 100 or so for these rides.
Feb 27th, 100km: A fast way to a did not finish.
Alas my first did not finish for a while, albeit after a bit of a blast. The ride was two (different) 50km loops from the HQ - for the first 50km loop I (along with some others) were told to set off a bit early (to avoid mass congestion on the roads) and hadn't got far before I was caught by "the train", a fast moving mini peloton of around 8 people from the Bishops Stortford http://www.bs-cc.org/ and the Victoria cycling clubs: http://www.victoriacyclingclub.co.uk/. The guys from Stortford seemed entirely content to just sit at the front and do the hard work so I shamelessly sat at the back, flying along, dispatching the first 50km in 1hr 45, an average of 28km / hr, pretty decent for February.
I was however experiencing increasing problems with gears, one by one my gears were skipping and by the end of the first loop of 50km my 30 gears had already been reduced to around 22. Deciding to press on and go back out for the second loop was the right decision at the time, albeit I was now on my own as the rest of the guys were tucking into heaps of tea and cake (in their defense, their usual ride is only 80km or so, it would have been entirely natural for them to have a 10 minute stop after a 50km blast, but if you are used to riding 200km+ then at 50km it feels like you've only just got started, I always crack on, only stopping properly at 100km).
Alas though after each extra km more gears disappeared before at the 65km mark all the moving bits of metal on the bike just gave up, twisting themselves into a small pile of expensive scrap. I gave the tea and cake boys a wave as they flew past me 10 minutes later, my bike now in bits at the side of the road.
With thanks to my long suffering wife who came to rescue me - go straight to the bike shop, do not pass go etc. All very depressing, but nice to have had a blast at the beginning.
March 6th 210km. Bonking all the way home.
£200 later and my bike is back from the bike shop. Still, the old chain, gears etc had done circa 10,000km since new a couple of years back so that's not bad on a pence per mile basis I suppose.
A 207km ride, this one being of two loops of circa 100km. The first 100km loop was spent being tugged aroudn by Ed "the jugernaught" Nevard, a well known local rider who for once was setting a pace somewhat too fast for the ever diminishing pack - at one stage is was around 30 strong, by the 50km mark it was down to around 12, at the 100km mark there were just 4 of us left and then it became 3 as I conceded defeat and "let them go on ahead".
Alas the last 60km were into a cold and stiff easterly headwind, the baron hertfordshire rolling farmland offering very little protection or place to hide. The whole leg felt like I was dragging a sandbag behind me. Part of it I'm sure was not really eating enough throughout the day and my body starting to eat itself instead - the classic cyclists / runners "bonk". A very tired and weary finish, 206 km in 8 hours 54 mins, average 23.1. Ed had pulled us so around the first 100km so fast that we were (literally) miles ahead of everyone else - but by the time I got back he was long gone. And just to add insult to injury he did the whole thing on a "fixed" (just one gear).
March 13th 215km Tri Tri and Tri again
The third and final 'Uts ride, a 3 "lap" route of 110km, 70km, 40km, each out and back to the clubhut. I found myself in a little group of 6 or so from the Cambridge triathlon club, 4 guys, 2 girls, all of them ironmen. I spent around half the ride with them, bumping into them on each of the legs and staying with them for a while. It was truly humbling that at the 180km mark when we're all feeling tired and drained that instead of gettig back on our bikes for the last 40km they would (in an ironman) run it instead - ironman is 4km swim, 170km ride then a full marathon (40km). Hats off to them all. Duly researched I see one of them was Lucy Gossage who gets a nice puff piece here. It was nice to think I would have matched her on the bike part of ironman (she finished 7th overall last year in UK ironman) though alas my marathon time would have been "somewhat" outside her 3hr 23...
http://www.tri247.com/article_6069.html
Finally for me the first ride of the season where I felt I was getting up to pace again - 215km in 8.5 hours for a very respectible average of 24.8km / hr.
Feb 27th, 100km: A fast way to a did not finish.
Alas my first did not finish for a while, albeit after a bit of a blast. The ride was two (different) 50km loops from the HQ - for the first 50km loop I (along with some others) were told to set off a bit early (to avoid mass congestion on the roads) and hadn't got far before I was caught by "the train", a fast moving mini peloton of around 8 people from the Bishops Stortford http://www.bs-cc.org/ and the Victoria cycling clubs: http://www.victoriacyclingclub.co.uk/. The guys from Stortford seemed entirely content to just sit at the front and do the hard work so I shamelessly sat at the back, flying along, dispatching the first 50km in 1hr 45, an average of 28km / hr, pretty decent for February.
I was however experiencing increasing problems with gears, one by one my gears were skipping and by the end of the first loop of 50km my 30 gears had already been reduced to around 22. Deciding to press on and go back out for the second loop was the right decision at the time, albeit I was now on my own as the rest of the guys were tucking into heaps of tea and cake (in their defense, their usual ride is only 80km or so, it would have been entirely natural for them to have a 10 minute stop after a 50km blast, but if you are used to riding 200km+ then at 50km it feels like you've only just got started, I always crack on, only stopping properly at 100km).
Alas though after each extra km more gears disappeared before at the 65km mark all the moving bits of metal on the bike just gave up, twisting themselves into a small pile of expensive scrap. I gave the tea and cake boys a wave as they flew past me 10 minutes later, my bike now in bits at the side of the road.
With thanks to my long suffering wife who came to rescue me - go straight to the bike shop, do not pass go etc. All very depressing, but nice to have had a blast at the beginning.
March 6th 210km. Bonking all the way home.
£200 later and my bike is back from the bike shop. Still, the old chain, gears etc had done circa 10,000km since new a couple of years back so that's not bad on a pence per mile basis I suppose.
A 207km ride, this one being of two loops of circa 100km. The first 100km loop was spent being tugged aroudn by Ed "the jugernaught" Nevard, a well known local rider who for once was setting a pace somewhat too fast for the ever diminishing pack - at one stage is was around 30 strong, by the 50km mark it was down to around 12, at the 100km mark there were just 4 of us left and then it became 3 as I conceded defeat and "let them go on ahead".
Alas the last 60km were into a cold and stiff easterly headwind, the baron hertfordshire rolling farmland offering very little protection or place to hide. The whole leg felt like I was dragging a sandbag behind me. Part of it I'm sure was not really eating enough throughout the day and my body starting to eat itself instead - the classic cyclists / runners "bonk". A very tired and weary finish, 206 km in 8 hours 54 mins, average 23.1. Ed had pulled us so around the first 100km so fast that we were (literally) miles ahead of everyone else - but by the time I got back he was long gone. And just to add insult to injury he did the whole thing on a "fixed" (just one gear).
March 13th 215km Tri Tri and Tri again
The third and final 'Uts ride, a 3 "lap" route of 110km, 70km, 40km, each out and back to the clubhut. I found myself in a little group of 6 or so from the Cambridge triathlon club, 4 guys, 2 girls, all of them ironmen. I spent around half the ride with them, bumping into them on each of the legs and staying with them for a while. It was truly humbling that at the 180km mark when we're all feeling tired and drained that instead of gettig back on our bikes for the last 40km they would (in an ironman) run it instead - ironman is 4km swim, 170km ride then a full marathon (40km). Hats off to them all. Duly researched I see one of them was Lucy Gossage who gets a nice puff piece here. It was nice to think I would have matched her on the bike part of ironman (she finished 7th overall last year in UK ironman) though alas my marathon time would have been "somewhat" outside her 3hr 23...
http://www.tri247.com/article_6069.html
Finally for me the first ride of the season where I felt I was getting up to pace again - 215km in 8.5 hours for a very respectible average of 24.8km / hr.
Monday 15 February 2010
The old squit 200km: three seasons in one day
Saturday Feb 13th, 202km out of Colney, nr Norwich.
This ride was cancelled last year, the course being under 6 foot of snow. This year it was a little touch and go with fresh snow on Wednesday putting the ride in doubt though by Friday it had thawed enough for the ride to get the all clear. Truth be told, this ride had mentally beaten me long before my legs got tired - after just 15km the early morning sleet turned once again into proper snow, via a nice hailstorm. We had a chat amongst us about which was preferable - riding without glasses and getting your corneas treated to hailstone dermabrasion every nano second or riding with glasses and getting a layer of sleet on the outside and condensation on the inside, making them impossible to see through. After much debate we decided that neither was preferable.
The course, duly coated with snow on top of hail on top of sleet on top of ice then became "a bit tricky", slowing everything down to a crawl. Somewhere in the middle of slithering through the white stuff came my first "sod this" moment and I almost turned for home. We then turned off the rural backlane onto a slightly more used road which had been gritted so on I ploughed to the first stop at 50km for a lovely bacon and egg sarnie.
The next 50km took a different route back to the Colney HQ, by now the slush had melted and the Norfolk country lanes had turned from white to brown - very very brown, in parts the lanes were more akin to fields / ditches than roads. If you want to know just how mucky the ride became, this should give you a good idea:
90km into the ride and just 10km from the HQ (and half-way point) the hail returns once again bigtime, and all of us in our little group of 6 say in unison "sod this". Back to the HQ at 100km I was close to just jumping in the car & going home (a number of people did) but I was neither all that cold nor all that wet (thanks mainly to some fab winter cycling kit) and it felt churlish coming all this way to just give up half way round.
Out again for the next 50km leg and winter turns to spring, with an hour or so of weak sunshine warming up the spirits. Alas then spring turned to autumn with a nasty stretch into a stiff arctic headwind slowing progress once again. By this point I was feeling a little physically unwell (remnants of a cold) and with a sagging heart was just about to call it a day and turn for home when an old cycling buddy caught me up (he's a lovely guy and super fit but he's twice my age so I know I'm struggling a bit whenever he catches me...) and a little chat took my mind off feeling unwell and perked me up again.
In and straight out of the 150km stop as it's starting to get dark now AND ONCE AGAIN SOME IDIOT LEFT HIS MAPLIGHT AT HOME SO HE CAN'T READ THE DARN ROUTESHEET ONCE IT GETS DARK... and I press on for home. Alas probability finally caught up with me 30km from home and after riding for 8 hours through sludge, grit, hedge trimmings & rocks the tiniest little flint managed to sneak in and puncture my rear tyre. Only now do you realise just how cold it is, standing around fiddling with wet tyres, fingers numb in just a few minutes. I didn't help myself by freezing my CO2 canister (they are fab, pump a tyre up in 2 seconds) onto my fingers - as the gas rushes out the canister goes instantly ice cold, sticking to anything wet.... Fool.
So by now it's properly dark, I'm cold from having fixed my puncture, I'm covered in shite from head to toe, I'm not feeling too well and I can't read the directions any more - but apart from that all is dandy. Once again I am picked up by another rider and chatting along as we ride perks us both up for the last hour or so back to the HQ.
Ride stats: 203km, ride time 8hr 45 mins (total time 10 hrs), average 23.1km / hr.
Monday 8 February 2010
Feb '10 - Winter 1066
Feb 7th, Hailsham - The Winter 1066. 100km, 1980m of climbing
One of the many rides organised by Dave Hudson out of Hailsham. His rides are always a little more expensive than most (OK, I'm talking £6 rather than the usual £3) but in return you get to stuff yourself silly at every stop with as much stodge and sugary stuff you can manage. He even brings along seats, toasters etc to the rest stops. All you do is sit on one of his seats, open your mouth and he just shovels in calories. Most people end the ride having put weight on...
Very much a ride of three thirds, the first third being the bit I get on least well with, a real bumpy continual up and down though Sussex lanes. None of it extreme, just up hill, round bend, down hill, round bend, up hill, round bend... for 35km to the first of the stodge stops. The next 40km were more my style of hills, long grindy steady climbs, each of them a few km long. This took us down to Hastings (the clue was in the title...). I've always wondered if a cyclist will (with sufficient speed etc) set off a speed camera and after a long grind to a ridge above Hastings we them had a 75km / hr blast down the other ride to the sea front, complete with the speed camera flashing away to it's hearts content. In hindsight I wish I had clocked it beforehand as I could have given it a "special wave" but I wasn't about to turn around and go back up the hill (not yet, anyway...).
A lovely cruise along the seafront at Hastings for about 5km, winter sun was out, sky was blue, then sharp right turn, up a 1 in 5 that leveled off to a 5km climb back up (& a bit further along) the ridge we'd come down and back to Dave for another helping of stodge.
The last 30km were dead flat, just a few m above sea level, across (not literally) the marshes along the sea front back to Hastings.
All in all a lovely ride, the sun came out and it's nice to feel fit again after the winter break.
Ride stats: 107km, climb 1,980m, ride time 4hr 50, average a bumpy 22km / hr.
200km out of Norwich this coming Saturday. If the newly arrived wintry blast doesn't shift that ride will be "a bit cold".
Monday 25 January 2010
Jan '10, finally the snow goes away.
So finally onto my bike after an interminably long winter.
Norfolk Nips: 100km, Jan 16th.
This should have been a nice trip around the Norfolk flatlands but turned into a really toughie - barely above freezing, very windy - the first 60km was into a horrible headwind, the flatlands of Norfolk offering no protection from the artic blast and pretty wet - both in terms of rain / sleet though more so in terms of the melt water flooding the roads for large sections of the ride - one part was thigh deep, complete with a stranded van in the middle just for effect. Alas my waterproof shoe liners were no match for 50cm of water and the last 70km of the ride was ridden with rather waterlogged shoes - not nice...
The leg home was a 40km blast with a stiff tailwind but alas by now the legs were shot after all the work into the wind. The stats for the ride tell their own story - distance - 100km, total climb - about nil, ride time just shy of 5 hours for an average of 20km / hr, I get over the Pyrenees with a better average than that.
Willy Warmer: 200km, Jan 23nd
I always find it quite serene setting off on a ride in the morning darkness, riding through all the day and ending in the evening darkness, a peace seems to settle on the country after dark and it's just you and your bike riding in peace and quiet along unlit country roads. This was a nice ride out of Chalfont, over the Chilterns, the first 140km or so being "a bit bumpy", the last 60km being a cruise back home. My lack of "race fitness" though was telling, too much Xmas pud and too many weeks out of the saddle. One of the other riders who I know cruised up to me after 50km and said "hello Chris, you look like you are making heavy work of that" and he was spot on. I often go through bad patches on a ride but my bad patch here lasted from 40km through to around the 160km mark, only when it got dark did I perk up and settle into my cruising rhythm. The sun came out. Twice. For 2 minutes each time. I smiled both times but it didn't last, alas.
Total ride 207km, climb 2,000m, ride time 9 hours for an early season bumpy ride average of 22.8km / hr.
Total stats for month:
Road bike: 450km
Mountain bike: circa 100km
Spin: 8 sessions.
Norfolk Nips: 100km, Jan 16th.
This should have been a nice trip around the Norfolk flatlands but turned into a really toughie - barely above freezing, very windy - the first 60km was into a horrible headwind, the flatlands of Norfolk offering no protection from the artic blast and pretty wet - both in terms of rain / sleet though more so in terms of the melt water flooding the roads for large sections of the ride - one part was thigh deep, complete with a stranded van in the middle just for effect. Alas my waterproof shoe liners were no match for 50cm of water and the last 70km of the ride was ridden with rather waterlogged shoes - not nice...
The leg home was a 40km blast with a stiff tailwind but alas by now the legs were shot after all the work into the wind. The stats for the ride tell their own story - distance - 100km, total climb - about nil, ride time just shy of 5 hours for an average of 20km / hr, I get over the Pyrenees with a better average than that.
Willy Warmer: 200km, Jan 23nd
I always find it quite serene setting off on a ride in the morning darkness, riding through all the day and ending in the evening darkness, a peace seems to settle on the country after dark and it's just you and your bike riding in peace and quiet along unlit country roads. This was a nice ride out of Chalfont, over the Chilterns, the first 140km or so being "a bit bumpy", the last 60km being a cruise back home. My lack of "race fitness" though was telling, too much Xmas pud and too many weeks out of the saddle. One of the other riders who I know cruised up to me after 50km and said "hello Chris, you look like you are making heavy work of that" and he was spot on. I often go through bad patches on a ride but my bad patch here lasted from 40km through to around the 160km mark, only when it got dark did I perk up and settle into my cruising rhythm. The sun came out. Twice. For 2 minutes each time. I smiled both times but it didn't last, alas.
Total ride 207km, climb 2,000m, ride time 9 hours for an early season bumpy ride average of 22.8km / hr.
Total stats for month:
Road bike: 450km
Mountain bike: circa 100km
Spin: 8 sessions.
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