A total mileage for the week of just 15 miles isn’t going to impress anyone is it. But a rest is also supposedly meant to be an essential part of any training plan too. And so began 7 days off the bike due to ‘work commitments’ (loosely termed you understand) and a weekend’s camping. Thing is, it didn’t really end up being much of a rest in the conventional sense, just something different. And I’m not sure that replacing training hours with digestion of liquid carbs (i.e. alcohol!) is what the text books have in mind either – but it sure was fun.
On Tuesday evening we had the final TdF briefing from Rick Wates et al, where about 50 people turned up. Those doing more than 10 stages had a pre-briefing before the masses, where Phil Deeker laid out the extra demands that were likely to be made of our minds and bodies – essentially what it takes to ensure you can successfully ride long stages day after day. Most of the talk was centred on the practicalities of the Tour and that getting into a logistical mess was more likely to be a reason for failure than a physical set-back. Although this was the right focus at this stage of the preparations, the more serious nature of the evening meant there was little time given to the romance or majesty of the trip. Jonny Wates was keen to emphasise the need to look out for each other during the event, and to avoid the tendency to go into a shell when things get tough – as he rightly pointed out it’s when, despite best-laid preparation, things don’t go exactly to plan that cracks appear - and everyone reacts differently under stress (anger, humour, despair, denial etc). All sounds a bit gloomy doesn’t it?! Ha, still, that can’t suppress my excitement about the trip, and departure now feels tantalisingly close.
Thursday turned out to be one of those dream ‘toys for the boys’ days – something that I’d never even consider doing privately given the prohibitive cost, but something I’d happily jump to the front of the queue for if it’s laid on for me. RSA, one of the insurance companies I research, arranged a track day at Goodwood for all analysts covering the stock. We had a good dinner the previous evening in Goodwood House and one hour talk from the management team, which appeared to justify the next day’s frivolities. Thursday morning, we drove down to the track and were taken round the circuit in Mercedes AMG saloons by Prodrive instructors, who explained the breaking areas, turn-in points, apex and exit-points of each corner. Next up, we had a go ourselves – having harboured dreams that I’d just step in and be told what I a natural I was, I quickly discovered that track driving is a little more challenging than it looks on TV…I didn’t crash or spin or anything as dramatic, I just wasn’t that good!
After familiarising ourselves in the Mercs, we were then given Aston Martin Vantages or DB9s to drive. I had no idea these road cars had so much poke – awesome fun, but a little disappointing to only get a couple of laps at a time, as every time I was just getting into it and learning new boundaries of what I and the car could do, we were asked to pull in to the pits. But the big highlight of the track part of the day was 2 flying laps with ex-F1 driver Johnny Herbert in a Le Mans Aston GT2 – what a sensational feeling! Having thought I might be a touch scared beforehand, I wasn’t at all frightened and just sped round with an enormous grin on my face. What it did highlight, in no uncertain terms, is the gaping chasm of driving skills between a novice like me and a seasoned pro like JH – where I’d previously thought there were corners, he was flat out through them!
After lunch, we were given control of a Subaru rally car on a course marked out with cones in a field. Great fun as we learnt to back-end the car round corners and power-slide round the bends. Once again, though, the highlight was a 2-lapper through a forest rally stage as a passenger next to a pro-driver. We were hurtling down single lane forest tracks at up to 70 mph, taking all the corners sideways and launching off a huge jump – big wide-eyed wow moments abound. Massively impressive control in a tight environment and truly exhilarating. I also went for a 15 min flight over Bognor Regis in a 1943 Harvard Warbird that had been used to train Spitfire pilots in WW2. All in all, a very spoiling day, with the kind of fun that very few people get the chance to experience. Thank you RSA – now, I must remember to change my recommendation from Hold to BUY. (Compliance, I didn’t really mean that…!)
We spent the bank holiday weekend camping at Mellow Farm in Hampshire, with Jems/Rich and Harry/Lisa, plus kids – so were 13 in all. The campsite was in an idyllic location, conveniently close to London, with a small river running past our pitch, which was in an old ox-bow lake. Importantly, our pitch had a ring for a campfire, which I think is an essential part of the whole camping experience. We took colossal amounts of kit with us – the more we camp, the more gear we seem to take…which seems to negate the point of camping to an extent I suppose, but makes it a whole lot more bearable. The kids had great fun playing in the river with our inflatable dinghy – and the rest of the campers were pretty agreeable on the whole – except for the weirdo (there’s always one) who decided to dry himself post-shower by lying naked outside his tent– until told that wasn’t really appropriate in a family setting!
Weekly totals
Commute – 15 miles
Other rides – zero!
Funds raised to date £5,265
Monday 31 May 2010
Sunday 23 May 2010
Smokin'
What do we do after months of moaning about the cold? Start complaining about the heat of course! To be fair, there were very few complaints about what was a quite stunning weekend, with temperatures well into the mid-20s centigrade and light winds. Most of us were more than happy to throw off the armwarmers and long-fingered gloves, and instead don the shades and slap on the suncream.
I had two rides planned for this weekend, to continue my process of adapting to back-to-back long days in the saddle. For Saturday I planned a less demanding route out towards Windsor, looping north and round the west side of Reading, before heading home through Ascot. We set off as a group of 4 at a very civilised 8.15am, being Clare, Jake and a friend of their’s called Ross, who is also doing a few stages of the TdF.
The highlights of the day were two-fold, besides the great weather and glorious English countryside. First of these was a fantastic pub where we stopped for an hour, and enjoyed some really good food – thanks to Ross who knew of The King William, tucked away down a lane in a hamlet called Ipsden, about 10 miles north of Reading, with beautiful views of sheep-filled fields across South Oxfordshire. Reminder to self – after all this ridiculous training, future rides should always include a good pub lunch. Second highlight was Jake’s increasing despair about his silly cycling tan. Wearing tight-fitting kit means any tan lines are usually highly pronounced, especially for someone like Jake, who clearly tans easily. Best of all are Jakes lily white hands on the end of his increasing sun-kissed brown arms – looks like he’s wearing a pair of white gloves, and the contrast is only going to get worse as we do more and more cycling on the TdF!
I am seriously impressed with the huge strides that Clare has made as a cyclist in the few months since she started doing this properly. She’s gone from having never ridden as far as 20 miles in January, to being able to ride 125 miles in relative comfort. Huge respect. And with that kind of form I’m convinced she’ll have no trouble completing the 5 stages of the TdF that she’s signed up for. More than I can say for some of the other TdFers, which might sound a bit pretentious of me, but I’m quite shocked at how little training some of the guys have done given the multiple stages that they’re planning to do. It’ll become pretty apparent pretty quickly what condition everyone’s in once we start the TdF proper.
Sunday was even hotter, with a much more challenging test ahead of us for the King of the Downs sportive – 115 miles up and down the North Downs, covering many of the climbs that I’ve been over many times over the last few years in Surrey and the Ashdown Forest. Jake and I (wisely) chose to get an extra hour in bed, so set off from the Gatwick starting point about an hour after the rest of the TdF group at close to 8am. Fuelled by the usual early doors adrenalin rush and the temptation of catching the TdF group up the road, we set off at a ridiculous pace for a couple of guys that had done 120+ miles the day before and had a long hilly day in the saddle ahead. The first half of the course was mainly in the Surrey ‘Alps’, taking in Leith Hill, Pitch Hill, Combe Bottom, Ranmore Common and Box Hill among other favourites. Having loosened the legs on these early hills, we managed to join a fast-moving train of riders on the way back to Gatwick and were moving along at 20-25mph at the half-way point.
Reaching the second major feed station at about 55 miles, we realised we’d caught up with the main group of about 10 TdF riders – they set off again while we waited to fill up water bottles (essential in the heat), but we were soon on our way again, now as a 4, having picked up Doug and John, both of whom are strong riders, so we were able to work well as a group swapping off the front of the line in turn. The terrain was easy and perhaps lulled us into a false sense of security ahead of the hill through Weir Wood in the Ashdown Forest, which was really just a warm-up before the leg-breaker that is aptly named the Wall. Some septuagenarian nutter was running up the Wall, with his hairy gut unclothed and hanging out in its full resplendent glory – happy chap, I said he was a lune to be doing that (takes one to know one) and that there was plenty of good TV nowadays to entertain an old man.
From this point on, Jake & I rode with the main TdF bunch – good to meet a few more new faces. I finished the ride well exercised, but not overly tired, having set a good pace over the final 15-20 miles back to Gatwick. I’ve got virtually no riding at all next week as we’re off camping for the weekend – a really tough decision to rest up, but I definitely I owe it to the family and my body could probably do with some respite – apparently recovery time is good for you, I just feel uncomfortable looking at a big fat zero in my training diary.
Weekly totals
Commute – 75 miles
Other rides – 235 miles
Funds raised to date £3,925.
I had two rides planned for this weekend, to continue my process of adapting to back-to-back long days in the saddle. For Saturday I planned a less demanding route out towards Windsor, looping north and round the west side of Reading, before heading home through Ascot. We set off as a group of 4 at a very civilised 8.15am, being Clare, Jake and a friend of their’s called Ross, who is also doing a few stages of the TdF.
The highlights of the day were two-fold, besides the great weather and glorious English countryside. First of these was a fantastic pub where we stopped for an hour, and enjoyed some really good food – thanks to Ross who knew of The King William, tucked away down a lane in a hamlet called Ipsden, about 10 miles north of Reading, with beautiful views of sheep-filled fields across South Oxfordshire. Reminder to self – after all this ridiculous training, future rides should always include a good pub lunch. Second highlight was Jake’s increasing despair about his silly cycling tan. Wearing tight-fitting kit means any tan lines are usually highly pronounced, especially for someone like Jake, who clearly tans easily. Best of all are Jakes lily white hands on the end of his increasing sun-kissed brown arms – looks like he’s wearing a pair of white gloves, and the contrast is only going to get worse as we do more and more cycling on the TdF!
I am seriously impressed with the huge strides that Clare has made as a cyclist in the few months since she started doing this properly. She’s gone from having never ridden as far as 20 miles in January, to being able to ride 125 miles in relative comfort. Huge respect. And with that kind of form I’m convinced she’ll have no trouble completing the 5 stages of the TdF that she’s signed up for. More than I can say for some of the other TdFers, which might sound a bit pretentious of me, but I’m quite shocked at how little training some of the guys have done given the multiple stages that they’re planning to do. It’ll become pretty apparent pretty quickly what condition everyone’s in once we start the TdF proper.
Sunday was even hotter, with a much more challenging test ahead of us for the King of the Downs sportive – 115 miles up and down the North Downs, covering many of the climbs that I’ve been over many times over the last few years in Surrey and the Ashdown Forest. Jake and I (wisely) chose to get an extra hour in bed, so set off from the Gatwick starting point about an hour after the rest of the TdF group at close to 8am. Fuelled by the usual early doors adrenalin rush and the temptation of catching the TdF group up the road, we set off at a ridiculous pace for a couple of guys that had done 120+ miles the day before and had a long hilly day in the saddle ahead. The first half of the course was mainly in the Surrey ‘Alps’, taking in Leith Hill, Pitch Hill, Combe Bottom, Ranmore Common and Box Hill among other favourites. Having loosened the legs on these early hills, we managed to join a fast-moving train of riders on the way back to Gatwick and were moving along at 20-25mph at the half-way point.
Reaching the second major feed station at about 55 miles, we realised we’d caught up with the main group of about 10 TdF riders – they set off again while we waited to fill up water bottles (essential in the heat), but we were soon on our way again, now as a 4, having picked up Doug and John, both of whom are strong riders, so we were able to work well as a group swapping off the front of the line in turn. The terrain was easy and perhaps lulled us into a false sense of security ahead of the hill through Weir Wood in the Ashdown Forest, which was really just a warm-up before the leg-breaker that is aptly named the Wall. Some septuagenarian nutter was running up the Wall, with his hairy gut unclothed and hanging out in its full resplendent glory – happy chap, I said he was a lune to be doing that (takes one to know one) and that there was plenty of good TV nowadays to entertain an old man.
From this point on, Jake & I rode with the main TdF bunch – good to meet a few more new faces. I finished the ride well exercised, but not overly tired, having set a good pace over the final 15-20 miles back to Gatwick. I’ve got virtually no riding at all next week as we’re off camping for the weekend – a really tough decision to rest up, but I definitely I owe it to the family and my body could probably do with some respite – apparently recovery time is good for you, I just feel uncomfortable looking at a big fat zero in my training diary.
Weekly totals
Commute – 75 miles
Other rides – 235 miles
Funds raised to date £3,925.
Sunday 16 May 2010
The final countdown
As Joey Tempest once said in one of the finer moments of mid-80s glam rock, “it’s the final countdown”. Although he was singing about lift-off into a new space odyssey (very Cold War) I’m sure most of us on the TdF are now increasingly feeling the same trepidation and excitement from the impending step into the unknown with only one month to go – minus that ludicrous hair of course.
This week my eldest daughter Ella, aged 11, made it absolutely and painfully clear how old Cress and I are in her eyes. Flicking through the TV channels absent-mindedly on Tuesday evening, we stopped on BBC2 which was showing a collection of Top of the Pops performances through the 1980s, starting with the New Romantics style(?!) of Duran Duran and ending with the birth of House/Dance like Ride on Time by Black Box. As we meandered along this nostalgic journey through our adolescence, Ella walked in to watch/listen – she managed a couple of minutes of tortured tolerance before expressing her absolute disgust at what she was hearing and seeing – looking like she’d just swallowed a t-spoon of salt, it was all “what is this awful music?”, “you didn’t actually listen to this, did you?”, “they can’t even sing” and “surely people didn’t wear clothes like that did they?”, followed by “pleeeaase can we turn over, it’s making me feel ill…” Having subjected ourselves to the likes of Fergal Sharkey, Bros, Wham, Dead or Alive, Europe, T’Pau, Mel & Kim, Tiffany, The Communards and the manufactured pop of Stock Aitken and Waterman (yes, Kylie & Jason), together with all-white jeans and white woolly jumpers, we had to admit she had a point. It all looked very very dated, which I suppose it is. I had always thought that dancing to 1980s music was impossible, until the House scene emerged at the end of the decade, but was reassured to see that everyone danced with that awful sway in those days. The 1980s really was a dark decade for the dancefloor, sandwiched inbetween the awesome 60s rock’n’roll, 70s disco and 90s dance/club music. Had to laugh when Chris de Burgh sang Lady in Red, typically the last song played at all those ‘balls’ we went to in our teens, which represented the evening’s last chance to get up close to the girl you’d been dying to snog all night. Happy days!
Sunday was the last organised TdF ride before the off, and there was a decent turn-out of 22 riders at the meeting point outside Dorking. I cycled down there and totally mistimed it, arriving about an hour early – an hour of sleep wasted, but it was nice to see the sun rising over Box Hill in the early hours – and it was warmish when the sun was out. We had a good ride from there down to Brighton and back, the only unpleasant part coming on the climb up to the top of South Downs – not because of the gradient in itself, but because as we hit the lower slopes a long procession of about 50 2-stroke mopeds streamed past us, put-putting filthy smoke directly into our path. This was made worse by Steve shouting “don’t let them get away” – red rag to a bull, so I chased them uphill at over 20mph – obviously I was gasping for air after several hundred metres, but only succeeded in inhaling blue oily fumes instead. Not pleasant. We had a very cold lunch on Brighton seafront before heading back to Dorking. Amazing the improvement there’s been in most people’s riding since the start of the year – obviously everyone’s training has paid off. My ride, including to the start and back to London totalled over 120 miles - and while not at an electric pace it felt reassuringly comfortable.
Just a quick word for the pros doing the Giro – if you ever thought they were a bunch of mollycoddled prima-donnas, think again. Saturday’s stage was incredible: the French/Belgians have the ‘Pave’ to test bike handling skills – unbelievably uncomfortable at best, treacherous in the wet. Lesser known, but just as challenging, the Italians have ‘Strada Bianchi’, which are white gravel roads. And it was raining on Saturday, so the white gravel roads quickly turned to slippery rivers of brown mud – and the riders quickly turned to brown mud too, so much so you couldn’t even see the team strips. Unsurprisingly the former mountain-bike riders and cyclo-cross riders faired the best with their better bike-handling. Tough, cold day in the saddle. Chapeau (or whatever they say in Italian!)
Weekly totals
Commute – 102 miles
Other rides – 123 miles
Funds raised to date £2093.
This week my eldest daughter Ella, aged 11, made it absolutely and painfully clear how old Cress and I are in her eyes. Flicking through the TV channels absent-mindedly on Tuesday evening, we stopped on BBC2 which was showing a collection of Top of the Pops performances through the 1980s, starting with the New Romantics style(?!) of Duran Duran and ending with the birth of House/Dance like Ride on Time by Black Box. As we meandered along this nostalgic journey through our adolescence, Ella walked in to watch/listen – she managed a couple of minutes of tortured tolerance before expressing her absolute disgust at what she was hearing and seeing – looking like she’d just swallowed a t-spoon of salt, it was all “what is this awful music?”, “you didn’t actually listen to this, did you?”, “they can’t even sing” and “surely people didn’t wear clothes like that did they?”, followed by “pleeeaase can we turn over, it’s making me feel ill…” Having subjected ourselves to the likes of Fergal Sharkey, Bros, Wham, Dead or Alive, Europe, T’Pau, Mel & Kim, Tiffany, The Communards and the manufactured pop of Stock Aitken and Waterman (yes, Kylie & Jason), together with all-white jeans and white woolly jumpers, we had to admit she had a point. It all looked very very dated, which I suppose it is. I had always thought that dancing to 1980s music was impossible, until the House scene emerged at the end of the decade, but was reassured to see that everyone danced with that awful sway in those days. The 1980s really was a dark decade for the dancefloor, sandwiched inbetween the awesome 60s rock’n’roll, 70s disco and 90s dance/club music. Had to laugh when Chris de Burgh sang Lady in Red, typically the last song played at all those ‘balls’ we went to in our teens, which represented the evening’s last chance to get up close to the girl you’d been dying to snog all night. Happy days!
Sunday was the last organised TdF ride before the off, and there was a decent turn-out of 22 riders at the meeting point outside Dorking. I cycled down there and totally mistimed it, arriving about an hour early – an hour of sleep wasted, but it was nice to see the sun rising over Box Hill in the early hours – and it was warmish when the sun was out. We had a good ride from there down to Brighton and back, the only unpleasant part coming on the climb up to the top of South Downs – not because of the gradient in itself, but because as we hit the lower slopes a long procession of about 50 2-stroke mopeds streamed past us, put-putting filthy smoke directly into our path. This was made worse by Steve shouting “don’t let them get away” – red rag to a bull, so I chased them uphill at over 20mph – obviously I was gasping for air after several hundred metres, but only succeeded in inhaling blue oily fumes instead. Not pleasant. We had a very cold lunch on Brighton seafront before heading back to Dorking. Amazing the improvement there’s been in most people’s riding since the start of the year – obviously everyone’s training has paid off. My ride, including to the start and back to London totalled over 120 miles - and while not at an electric pace it felt reassuringly comfortable.
Just a quick word for the pros doing the Giro – if you ever thought they were a bunch of mollycoddled prima-donnas, think again. Saturday’s stage was incredible: the French/Belgians have the ‘Pave’ to test bike handling skills – unbelievably uncomfortable at best, treacherous in the wet. Lesser known, but just as challenging, the Italians have ‘Strada Bianchi’, which are white gravel roads. And it was raining on Saturday, so the white gravel roads quickly turned to slippery rivers of brown mud – and the riders quickly turned to brown mud too, so much so you couldn’t even see the team strips. Unsurprisingly the former mountain-bike riders and cyclo-cross riders faired the best with their better bike-handling. Tough, cold day in the saddle. Chapeau (or whatever they say in Italian!)
Weekly totals
Commute – 102 miles
Other rides – 123 miles
Funds raised to date £2093.
Sunday 9 May 2010
Is it May or March?
Seems like last weekend's cold snap wasn't a blip after all - a few mildly tepid weeks in April, and now it's ridiculously cold again - please tell me that April wasn't our summer . I was out riding on Saturday for 7 hours and the temperature never got any better than 6 or 7 degrees centigrade. And it's supposed to be May FFS! So reluctantly, I had to dig deep into the bottom of the clothes chest and pull out the long-finger gloves, winter socks, overshoes, legwarmers and armwarmers again.
For once, I couldn't be bothered to plan a route for my weekend ride, so rather unimaginatively I cycled out to Box Hill along a well-trodden route, with a plan to do multiple 8 mile circuits taking in the famous climb. Box Hill is a village on top of the North Downs near Dorking. It's neither very long (2.5km), nor very steep (average about 4-5%), and the road surface isn't great either. But for London-based cyclists the climb's got a scarcely deserved reputation as a mecca for any serious roadie. I'm pretty sure that's because it has 3 switchback corners on it, which gives the false impression that it must be quite steep, and somehow manages to give it an air of an Alpine road climb - in leafy Surrey. Somewhat farcical. But, in the absence of anything better, it's a very useful place to go for hill training and can be a proper challenge, depending on how fast and how often you choose to ride it. And I was choosing to ride up it lots and lots...but not very fast.
I seem to be developing a pattern on my long rides. I start off pretty well and after 25 miles feel strong and confident that the rest of the trip is going to continue in the same vein. But come 30-35 miles in, I suddenly begin to flag and the next 10-15 miles are a real struggle. Usually accompanied by a strong ache in the lower back, my legs begin to feel increasingly devoid of energy. Then, after that episode, I start to get better again and almost feel like I'm getting stronger with every mile. Brief rests seem to help a lot, so that makes me confident that I'll have less of a problem on the TdF as I expect we'll be stopping or slowing down quite frequently in a big group. I'm pretty sure the problem's not nutrition-related as I eat and drink fairly continously throughout my ride.
Of course, the other reason that Box Hill is so popular with cyclists is the fantastic National Trust cafe at the top of it. Apparently, it's illegal for cyclists to continue past the cafe without stopping. Yes, apparently. More like it's a complete necessity by then. I was going through one of my weak legs, achy back episodes on Saturday, and knew that a stop at the cafe would sort me out. But, each time I ground past the cafe at what felt like glacial pace in the unrelenting drizzle, and looked across at the cafe windows I could see that it was still firmly closed - the unfair penalty for starting out too early. It was only on my 4th pass that I saw that it had eventually opened. And what a treat that was after all those 'failed' passes. As you can see from the photo, the choice is overwhelming - a complete carb-fest - but what to have? First off a coffee to warm up. After what must've seem like an eternity for the long-suffering lady behind the window, I settled on a piece of homemade treacle tart. I say piece, but this doesn't quite do it justice, as it was a huge bed of pastry and treacle, all sugary sweet, and quite delicious. Said lady asked if I had any change, rather than my £5 note, but I assured her that any change she gave me would most probably be returned to her pretty soon. Sure enough, I was back in the queue for my second square foot of treacle tart about 2 minutes later. Now that made the rest of the ride go a bit better for sure. Note to Popeye - treacle tart tastes a whole lot better than spinach. Note to self - don't ever try to carry treacle tart in back pocket, however good it is.
Highlight of the weekend - other than the treacle tart - was my final Chelsea game in my season-ticket seat - which I'm giving up after 13 years (just too many other calls on my time / money now). But what a way to go out - winning the Premiership on the final day of the season, by beating Wigan 8-0, Chelsea's biggest ever League win in 105 years of history. Most goals (103) scored by a top-flight team since 196?, golden boot for Drogba, (share of) golden gloves for Cech. And a great cuzza with Dave and Ben afterwards too! Ok, so not great for my training but WTH.
Weekly totals
Commute - 103 miles
Other rides - 100 miles
Funds raised to date £2093
Sunday 2 May 2010
Getting into the routine
So, I know I can cover the distance of any one stage of Le Tour, having completed several rides of over 100 miles this year alone. My challenge is to be able to wake up and repeat it day after day for 3 weeks. That means I need to get my body accustomed to doing just that. Phil Deeker, our Tour organiser and rider of 300 Cols inside 30 days, has suggested I do as many back-to-back 100 milers as I can before the start of the TdF. So that's just what I did this weekend.
First ton was riding up to stay with Tommy and Polly near Silverstone. The weather turned out to be much better than forecast, and while not warm was thankfully dry. Having fretted and fretted about wind speed and direction recently, my new mental approach is to just take it as it comes - frankly, I can't do anything to change the wind and I won't be able to change my route to avoid the wind on the TdF, so I've just decided to take it as it comes and deal with it the same way I'd deal with a hill or a day of rain - come what may. This doesn't mean I won't notice the wind, just that I won't get so worked up about it. As a result, I didn't mind the slight headwind the whole way to Tommy and Poll's, and actually had a nice time. I had to ride past their house and cover another 30 miles to make up the distance to 100 miles, but that meant I got to take in a part of Northants that I'd never really been through. And I'm glad I did, beacuse I went through some stunning English villages, with lots of St George's flags flying, tempting-looking pubs and classic English churches. And don't let anyone tell you that Northants is flat - because it ain't. It doesn't have the steep pitch of the North or South Downs, but the rolling countryside can sure sap the legs of energy.
Tommy and I got an early night ahead of the Squires and Spires sportive the following day. Tommy is doing 4 stages of the TdF and the S&S sportive was going to be his longest ride to date, while I wasn't entirely sure what the route was going to be like, how my legs would feel with 100 miles in them already, or how much we were going to be blown around by forecast high winds and heavy rain (but remember I don't worry about that anymore...right?). We arrived at the HQ in Naseby - site of Cromwell's crushing defeat of the Royalist forces (ok I looked it up on wikipedia) - and it was freezing cold, in May for goodness sake. So cold that I couldn't actually hold my cup of coffee my hands were shaking so much. Praising my foresight for bringing a bag full of winter cycling clothes, I quickly donned full length leg warmers, neoprene overshoes and a long-sleeved top. We hooked up with fellow TdFer James 'Balders' Hartigan, and Tommy's local ride mates Al, Guy and Henry/Chappers. Balders is yet to embrace the lycra religion and unfailingly turns up to rides in the same gear - red and white striped rugby top, knee-length summer shorts (no padding) and this time embellished his outfit with a pair of knitted woollen shooting mitts - a quite magnificent, unintentional, two fingers to the lycra-ed masses lining up beside him.
By the time we set off, we'd been sitting in a queue for over 10 mins waiting our turn to ride out in groups of 20, a few minutes apart. I was shaking with the cold, and had little chance to warm up on the first couple of miles, which were predominantly downhill. Al, I'm pretty sure because of the cold/shivering, got an early frightener with a dose of the speed wobbles on a fast descent - I've been there, it's not nice, and there's a terrible sense of impending disaster when it happens, and braking only seems to make it worse. Luckily, he managed to scrub off enough speed to cruise to a halt. Shaken, but ok. Convinced I'd met Chappers before, I went through the usual checklist in my head: school, kids' school, uni, work etc, before I correctly narrowed it down to Reading Uni. Different years, but plenty of friends in common - small world, we'd probably last seen each other through the bottom of a pint glass of snakebite 'n' black in the Aths Pav. The first 35 miles went very quickly, with easy terrain and a friendly tailwind - I was loving the company of our group of 6 after so many recent miles riding alone, and my legs felt pretty good despite the previous day's effort.
After about 40 miles, I started to get seriously uncomfortable lower back pain, and worried that 300 miles in the prior 7 days was starting to tell. Another bonus of riding in a group though, is the chance to sit in behind someone else's wheel and take a breather - so I did just that for the next 5 miles and used the chance to stretch out and recuperate. Thanks team. After that little blip I felt completely fine for the rest of the ride. As we turned for home at the foot of the loop, we all knew that the wind was about to turn from friend to foe and the return leg was going to be a lot harder, particularly as the second part of the ride is also a lot more hilly. Our tidy group of 6 now started to split on the climbs and most wind-exposed sections, but for the most part we managed to stick together. Henry, Guy and Al had ridden the route before, so had prepped the rest of us for the stiff final ascent - but as Al and I rode through the parkland leading up to the final climb, a number of riders passed us, with comments like 'don't worry this is the last hill' implying that we were really struggling. That hurt my pride. I'm competitive. I was feeling charged. So, when I got to the bottom of said climb, I thought f*ck 'em, and blitzed past them all...showing off? So what, I felt better for it! Trouble was, the S&S course was only 72 miles long, and I needed to do 100 miles. That meant riding back to Tommy & Pol's house, back the way I'd just come to make up the distance - but at least the wind was behind me all the way back, and the miles clicked through quite quickly.
A fun weekend, and getting into the routine of consecutive century rides.
ps, sorry Balders, you finished too late for the group photo
Weekly totals:
Commute: 101 miles
Other rides: 204 miles
Funds raised to date: £2092
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