Sick sick sunny

Didn’t blog about last weeks ride as it never really happened.  I developed a cold Tuesday before last which progressed into a combination cold/cough by the Friday and had me take my second day of sick from work this year.  I am guessing the 60 mile ride in the rain the weekend before (last post) contributed to this.  Saturday was another day in and out of bed and I woke up Sunday feeling pretty good so Joy and I took to the bikes for a gentle 20 mile ride which turns out I was not ready for as I wheezed my way round and felt exhausted pretty much from the off. 
I normally have my asthma under control through watching my diet and avoiding smoke etc but it has really flared up with this bout of man flu and I have had to use inhalers every day.

I had hoped to do a 30 mile ride home on Thursday but soon had to accept that I couldn’t get enough oxygen into my blood so I stuck with it as much as I could but cut the ride short at 26 miles and got home feeling like I had done triple that.  
Following on from the above I set off gently this morning with the hope of doing a 60 mile ride but knowing I may have to cut it short again.  It was a glorious morning which really helps, especially when I am on my own like today.  I was having difficulty breathing and spent half the time coughing for the first ten miles but I kept on plugging away at a quick quick slow slow pace as my body came and went from feeling fine to feeling like a tonne of lead.  Bumped into Richard going in the other direction at Puttenham and had a nice chat with him for a couple minutes before heading in our different directions.  Would like to have joined Richard but I was at the 32 mile mark and was heading home to refill my water bottle and grab some lunch.  I got home having completed 37 miles at an average of 17.4mph so was pretty impressed with the progress.  My planned 20 minute rest turned out to be just shy of an hour as I had to attend to an issue with a buyer for something I sold on ebay.

Felt like I could go for more so I headed out again.  Did some big climbs on the second part of the ride and I am just pleased to have made the 60.68 miles, especially returning 16.8mph average over the whole distance. 
Feel absolutely exhausted now though and really hope this bug clears up soon.

New Fastest Speed 44.2mph

 

Had a staggered training ride on Saturday as Joy mentioned that, weather dependant, she would like to come out on the bike for a 20 mile distance, Stacey had an athletics event in the afternoon so didn’t want to ride more than 40 miles and I wanted to do another 60 to keep the momentum going.

Stacey rode over to us in the morning and the three of us did a 23 mile loop down to Green Cross.  It’s the first time Joy has joined me on a proper training ride but she did magnificently, keeping up a great pace around 18mph on the flat which averaged out to 15.6mph over the distance.  This was especially good considering how it started to drizzle as we left home and didn’t stop for the duration of this section of the ride.

After Stacey and I had returned Joy back home we headed out on a rough idea of a route back to his place via the other side of Farnham indenting to do another 15 miles together.  This was quite a lot of unknown roads to me and going along Compton Way was awesome as its lots of small ups and downs so plenty of short sprints rewarded with a nice downhill after.  We missed a turning on the way back and got a little lost but when we got to Beacon Hill Road I remembered how this is where I had set my previous fastest speed (44.0mph) a few weeks back and decided to have another shot at topping this.  All tucked in and down on the drops I kept on pedalling hard and changing down through the gears until I reached ninth but had a slight problem with tenth not wanting to engage for about 5 seconds so was not perfect but I still managed to hit 44.2mph so happy with that.

After leaving Stacey at his place I headed back on an idea of a route I had in my head to tag another 20 miles on to the 42 ridden so far.  It had been on and off drizzle so far but then around the 45 mile mark it absolutely chucked it down with rain falling from the sky like a river so thick that I could not see further than a couple of metres.  This continued for the next 5 to 10 miles and was particularly demoralising when combined with riding on my own.  I got home having completed 63 miles in total and managing 15.3mph average over the distance.  The average speed is a bit down from what I wanted to achieve but looking at the splits of the ride I can see its where we where going slow due to being lost and then having to slow down when I couldn’t see where I was going.
When I got home both the bike and I looked more like we had been mountain biking through the woods so after a shower and a huge plate of delicious Jerk Chicken with Rice and Pea which Joy had cooked for us I spent 3 hours cleaning both our bikes and re oiling all the moving parts.  I got on with this because I did plan to do a 40 mile ride to Uxbridge on the Sunday but it was chucking it down again the next morning and I wimped out blaming not wanting to get my nice clean bike dirty!!!

New Personal Best 20:55

I set of on the bike this morning for the ride to work without any particular plan to go fast but then after getting a couple of miles down the road I spotted that I was going at a fair turn of speed so decided to see if I could keep it up and get under the 21 minute barrier.

I did a hilly 20 mile route home yesterday so my legs where not tip top but I pushed along keeping an eye on the cycle computer, constantly working out if it was feasible to hit the target time.  I made a decision not to sprint hills a few weeks back in order to get use to conserving energy on the saddle so that I can go longer distances, but threw this aside this morning and enjoyed hitting 19mph topping the climb.

End result was 16 seconds off my previous personal best, let’s see how long the new record stands!

60 Far, 60 Good

Went on the third of the rides organised by Richard on Saturday.  Really surprised at my commitment as it was tipping it down when I got up just before 7.00am and the sound of the rain sent a chill down my spine as I was getting ready.  Huge bowl of porridge and time pondering over which layers to put on later I loaded the bike into the car and headed to the office (I know I should ride there but not quite ready for 77 miles in one day).  Turns out someone (no names) took the opportunity to bail on us when Richard called them at 7.00 for their opinion on calling it off but the rest of us where raring to go at 9.00.  It was still pretty blustery but the clouds had decided stop raining for a while and we even had patches of blue sky as we set off.  Richard had planned a 61 mile course which had us heading south (straight into the wind) for 28 miles, then 8 miles west (trying not to get blown over) and finally a 25 mile northbound return (hopefully blowing a gale behind us for assistance).  With it just being the four of us, and all having ridden together previously we accepted how the wind needed to be attacked and quickly had a peloton going and took turns to take the brunt of the wind up front.

We stopped for a ten minute rest around the 32 mile mark in order to eat.  I had my now melted twix and a flap jack.

Richard had a really long climb for us at the 38 mile point which had us climb just over 500 feet over 2.5 miles. Which was nice.  This did of course lead onto a fantastic down hill, but as with last week I could not take full advantage for fear of other road users (cars) coming the other way on this single track road.  The gradient was so steep that when you let the breaks go it felt like you were on a jet propelled bike.  This was a great feeling but the 4x4 coming at me as I hurtled down the hill whilst shouting "CAR" at the top of my lungs to warn the others behind me provided enough of a wake up call to pull the breaks a bit more and slow down.

It turned out to be a really pleasant day weather wise so was nice to see lots of places I have not been to before and take in the scenery.  Ride seemed to go very well and we made good time still averaging 15mph over the distance so feels great to say 60 far, 60 good. 

Edit - Apologies to those who are not blessed with being dyslexic, so far so good.