Since last Wednesday I have been fighting a losing battle against the slowly returning pain.  Which leaves me feeling somewhat like the above picture.  After a screamingly painful Sunday, with all the weapons at my command in action, I finally got things down to a manageable background level.  Well tolerable anyway.  And it’s slowly receding.  However it doesn’t particularly like core work, which I felt the need to test out with two workouts, as you do.  And historically it doesn’t like cycling either.  So I needed to test that out too, right?

Well, it is Wednesday…and though it may be the last one for a while, once again that meant Alan and hills.  Fourth hump day, so four hills.  Though oddly, our route turns out to have had exactly the same mileage as last week’s three hill route, yet with slightly less climbing.  Not sure how that works!

So, which ups were on the menu today?  Shipham, Burrington, the A39 climb up to the aerial, and then Old Bristol Hill.  Relentless hard hills, but in weird variable weather.  I was so hot, and thus over-heating, by the time we got to the top of Burrington Combe I had to stop and take off a layer and squeeze it into the saddle bag.  It was practically Spring-like up there.  But by the third time we climbed up the Mendips we were climbing into what felt like damp freezing fog!  At least I didn’t have to do Old Bristol Hill in the snow again…  It did mean I had to be a bit more careful down Cheddar Gorge than usual…boo hiss 😉

Having opted not to take the magic pills this morning, so as to be as with it as possible, I was occasionally painfully reminded that maybe I should have done.  Going up decent hills sets it off, and that’s what we were doing.  It certainly didn’t make going uphill any easier.  But then I’m not sure what would 😉  Apparently the only way to get better at going up hills is to keep going up hills.  So we kept going up hills *grin*.

All in all, at the end of the day, <insert annoying phrase of your choice here>, etc., I’m really pleased with how it went.  Alan enjoyed discovering yet another hill, and once he’s done West Harptree and the Glider Club hill I think we’ll pretty much have covered the Mendip climbs.  Oh, and the last one of those two he can do by himself – I still know my limits 😉  But I performed ok overall, I got up everything, and I got up Old Bristol Hill a couple of minutes faster than I did three weeks ago, so that can’t be bad.  And best of all, I’m not feeling worn out now.  Mind you, it is time I took some of those pills…  Ho hum 🙂

Cycling time: 2:45
Distance: 36.3 miles
Avg: 13.1 mph
ODO: 7984.7 miles