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