Category Archives: Training

All I wanna do is take a ride into the blue

Work done for the day, with the sun shining, it was time to play. Out with the winter layers, away with the skin. Me and the (filthy) bike and the seaside loop.

After the requisite 45 minutes, all was well with the world, and at the beach the low sun reflected off sea and sand alike, blurring the lines betwixt and between, all spread out like mercury fallen beneath the sky. One for the mind’s eye, not the camera however.

On the way back, overhead and over the hills, the clouds divided the sunlight in biblical fashion, as the winter shadows grew even longer and the afternoon temperature slowly dropped. It all worked, me included. All in all, it kinda rocked…

Cycling time: 2:00
Distance: 32.2 miles
Avg: 16.0 mph
ODO: 7063.3 miles

…as did the bath I had to have to warm up properly afterwards, and the leftover Tangfastics that somewhat miraculously the mob had saved for me. Recovery food, right? 😉

I have a Gumbie cat in mind

It’s been a bit of a non-standard week. After walking, up Snowdon on Saturday, it took three days before my legs were even close to working properly again. Yes, I said walking. It’s not always about the bike, remember? 😉 However apparently walking up mountains does not use the same muscles as riding up them, though it takes me nearly as long! As a result I spent three days hobbling around like I’d been thrown off Snowdon, Hephaestus stylee, and that was just on the flat. Watching me going up and down our stairs using the bannister was apparently very amusing, but I choose to believe that’s just because the mob have, unsurprisingly, a juvenile sense of humour 😉

And then, just when I was thinking I could possibly try and get back to my usual exercise routine, we sadly and unexpectedly had to have one of our cats put to sleep, and, well, life went a little pear-shaped. Very sad times 🙁

Eventually, once the dust had settled, two workouts later, and with the incentive of company to ride with and good weather to do so in, I finally made it out on the bike again today, with Alan, one of the newer members of the ACG. Even though he’d originally had hills in mind, he was more than amenable to doing a Glastonbury coffee run instead. Easily led astray, as it were 😉 So that’s what we did. In unseasonable warmth, with arms and (in his case) legs out! It felt more like late Spring than early winter, and it was very lovely. A bit windy, to be fair, but given warmth and sunshine, it seems churlish to complain. It turns out I’d missed my bike, and I feel a whole heap better for having been out on it 😀

Cycling time: 1:59
Distance: 32.1 miles
Avg: 16.1 mph
ODO: 7031.1 miles

Well don’t think I’m trying not to learn

I didn’t want to go for a training ride today. I just wanted to go for a ride. So I did. Nothing out of the ordinary or exceptional. Sometimes it’s just about riding the bike, right? Under a blanket of grey cloud, I made it up as I went along. I took a couple of turnings I’ve always wondered about. I even managed to get lost. Well, lost might be pushing it, since I doubt there’s actually a road around here I haven’t been down at least once, even if I don’t remember it, and every way always joins up with some way you do know. But I was definitely on roads less traveled, though no longer the roads not taken. I rode out, and I rode back. And as I turned my new key in my new lock, and then closed my door behind me, the rain started. Result 🙂

Cycling time: 2:01
Distance: 32.6 miles
Avg: 16.1 mph
ODO: 6999 miles

PS: told you Dunkery Beacon was hard 😉

I’m relatively twisted

I think it’s fair to say that food and I don’t really get on. Which is probably why I don’t have much of an appetite these days. Well, since what I do eat rarely remains where it ought to for long, I can’t usually be bothered with the consequences! I’ve also been on a bit of a health kick/diet lately, which means I’ve been eating even less than usual. Which seems like a good idea until you then go out and ride the bike for a couple of hours, having omitted breakfast as well, and wipe yourself out for the rest of the day. Oops…

It was only a couple of hours out with George, running her errands, and chatting…but it got harder and harder to keep up and keep talking and by the time I got in, I was totally spaced, had as much energy and co-ordination as a newborn kitten, and I didn’t get it together again until mid-afternoon. But hey, at least I got to go to the beach, right? 🙂 Still, it would appear that if I want to survive this Sunday’s Exmoor Beast, I had better spend the next couple of days eating healthy carby stuff in reasonable quantities!

Cycling time: 2:23
Distance: 34.6 miles
Avg: 14.5 mph
ODO: 6900.1 miles

In the meantime, my plans for 2015 advance slowly, and I am mad excited, because next March I’m going on a Wheels in Wheels training camp for a week in Andalusia. How cool is that?! Hope springs eternal…*fingers crossed*.

I wanna take a ride, I wanna kiss the sky

And this weekend I have done both. Seven of the magnificent ACG did a route that was unsurprisingly unchallenging yesterday morning, as it was devised by yours truly for a ride I didn’t do on Wednesday! Well, it seemed a shame to waste the effort involved in mapping it out, in the absence of better suggestions. It was pretty good, as it happens: good weather, good riding, good company, and good coffee at Rich’s. Thanks to Mike, Chris L, Chris G, Dave, Alan and Rob for joining me 🙂

And for part two? Today I went and jumped out of a perfectly good aeroplane again, with a friend who I made first time around; we sort of egged each other into it! So we went back together, where separately neither of us might have done. And we did it again. Twice! *grin*. It may well not be the last time either…well, I’m a perfectionist, I want to do it better 😉

So this weekend, as you can see, I rode, I kissed another piece of sky, and both made me smile. Can’t be bad 🙂

Cycling time: 2:12
Distance: 35.2 miles
Avg: 16.0 mph
ODO: 6865.5 miles

So I will stand in the rain until I am clean

I did not want to go for a ride yesterday morning. Oh no. Not having been woken up by the predicted torrential rain outside, and with my bike all nice and clean and oiled and everything. If it had just been me, I’d have bailed. I still considered bailing. Seriously considered. But since four others had signed up for joining me, and I’m a conscientious soul, I didn’t. And neither did two of them. Since it was still seriously raining when we three met in the Square, we decided just to head straight for coffee at Sweets. A Sweets that was full of other very wet cyclists, including a contingent of the Tor 2000 lot, and three of the Brent Knoll branch of the ACG. Lots of familiar faces then, and plenty of friendly banter as we all waited for coffee, cake, etc…yep, service was as ever, with a smile but somewhat slow.

As we sat there, getting colder, with water pooling a little embarrassingly beneath every one of us, the weather outside got better. By the time we left, en masse, the rain had stopped so rather than taking the fastest way back home, we took the long route together with the BK Velo three and couple of others. It was nice to have the extra company, and the wheels to hide behind as the wind got up, though keeping up was hard work! It was oddly amusing though, as the ACG is more known for losing riders en route than for going forth and multiplying… 😉 They all peeled off eventually to make their way to their homes, leaving us original musketeers to head for ours a little more slowly. Of course by the time we got back, the weather was proper brightening up and the rest of the day turned out to be glorious!

Cycling time: 1:35
Distance: 25 miles
Avg: 15.7 mph
ODO: 6830.3 miles

But hey, it turned out to be a fairly good ride, a far better one than looked likely at the start. Even if I did get soaked. Even wearing my waterproof. Yes, I did actually wear it. I do learn, it just takes me a while 😉 It was a good call as that and the base layer I opted for, in addition to the usual layers, meant I stayed warm enough. See – it’s back to that time of year, layers are once more the answer. And Rule 9 rules again. I think I’ll be saving my new sunglasses for next year…

Our house, in the middle of our street

Today, finally, after days of looking at bikes and not being on one, I got to ride my bike. Which is good, because my head was off on one this morning, and there’s no better cure for that than a decent ride and some outdoor head space.

For some reason I had been going to go and do hill repeats up Cheddar Gorge. And then I realised that such things are incompatible with my notoriously low boredom threshold. But for some strange reason hills still beckoned, so I had to plot a route that involved a variety of ups to endure, downs to enjoy, and enough miles to make it all worth doing. Mentally figuring that out was way more effective than counting sheep last night!

I’m still recovering from the weekend, and thus sleeping a lot, so it wasn’t an early start this morning, but it was my first day off in what feels like forever so I had the time to do both recovering and riding. After a quick route plot on mapmyride this morning just to make sure I’d got things roughly right, I headed off late morning, and did just what I’d said I would. I went up – Cheddar Gorge, Blagdon Hill, Rowberrow. And I totally nailed some downs – Harptree, Burrington, Shipham – *grin*.

It went pretty well. Maybe even surprisingly so. OK, so some of it was hard work, but then that’s the point. Some of it hurt, literally, but since I’m mostly a pain-free zone at the moment, you won’t hear me complaining too much about that. And the downs were awesome. Me and the bike felt very in tune throughout – though my poor baby is making some “I am in need of maintenance” noises and I think the saddle position and height need adjusting… And it may not have been sunny, but although it tried to rain, it failed. Good for my body, good for my head. It was therefore, as they say, all good. Happy Days 🙂

And then I had another long nap to recover. In our house, in the middle of our street 🙂

Cycling time: 2:20
Distance: 34.3 miles
Avg: 14.6 mph
ODO: 6805.3 miles

This whole world’s wild at heart and weird on top

Well I know how the camel got his hump, though I’m not sure how he got two, but to tie things together, with a little, maybe even a lot, of artistic license, since my last mini-epic, I have ridden twice. Neither of them in the Pyrenees, which is where you’ll find the camel. See? It all makes sense now, right? 😉 Mind you I’m not sure you can have a mini-epic; that’s probably somewhat of a misnomer, a contradiction in terms, or even an oxymoron. However it’s just possible I’m getting a little side-tracked here, nest-ce pas? Maybe I should get this show back on the road. Or maybe it’s actually a three-ring circus? 😉

new tools

Firstly I proved that I can reassemble my bike all by myself without it falling apart en-route afterwards, on a sociable sunny Sunday coffee run with some of the ACG. Good to know, right? And a perfect excuse for buying more tools 😉

Cycling time: 1:52
Distance: 29.8 miles
Avg: 15.9 mph

And today I proved that although there was not as much in the legs as I would have liked, they can still just about go up hills. I did beat my PB on the “Down the Gorge” segment though *grin*. I now have to go back and knock 3 seconds off that to make me the only kind of QOM I ever am 😉 Mind you, Strava seems to be increasingly inaccurate these days, it’s convinced I took a very strange way up past the Webbington and I really didn’t, so maybe I won’t bother.

Cycling time: 1:44
Distance: 25.8 miles
Avg: 14.7 mph
ODO: 6771 miles

On that note, I think I shall make like the camel, and quit while I’m behind. Well, actually the cow-like critter, which might be a Brahman, is behind…but you get the picture 😉

Freedom is only one more step away

Still busy…but not too busy to ride. Not quite anyway. On Friday George and I did a Glastonbury run for coffee, which appears to be somewhat of a habit these days. To be fair, it was not because I was being lazy, as is oft the case, but because she had work errands to run there. I was happy to tag along, have a good chat, and then make my own way back. Well, they do do good coffee. See, I’m very easily motivated really 😉

Cycling time: 1:48
Distance: 30.0 miles
Avg: 16.5 mph
ODO: 6451.3 miles

Today I did one of my usual loops, in very welcome warm sunshine, which, due to my hectic schedule, may well turn out to be the last time I get to ride before the ACG get to the Pyrenees this weekend. My Wednesday will be spent cleaning and oiling the bike, and then trying to get it into my bike box…*gulp*. Luckily I see Youtube has an official video to help me, which may prove essential! And yes, still dreading it…*grin*.

Cycling time: 1:48
Distance: 28.8 miles
Avg: 15.9 mph
ODO: 6480.1 miles

I was a bit slower than I expected today, but since eldest has given me a cold, and my weekend playing Aunty in London was less than abstemious, I guess it’s probably not surprising, and neither is it important. Enjoying riding my bike in the sun was however. And, courtesy of one of my lovely nieces, both my bike and I have matching co-ordinated loom band bracelets. How cool is that? 🙂

Like a whirlpool it never ends

Plans are fluid things. There was one, and then there was another, and then finally and perfectly, a plan came together that involved both cycling, and my mate Gary. Parfait! And everybody loves parfait 😉

We went for coffee in Glastonbury, by a slightly more circuitous route than usual. All about the cycling and the coffee and the craic. Oh and the cameras. I got him and he got me. B*gger! Ah well, at least black & white is not just a bit arty, but also a bit more flattering. Like candlelight 😉

Cycling time: 2:06
Distance: 35.5 miles
Avg: 16.8 mph
ODO: 6421.3 miles