Long-ish Sunday Ride
Fresh from my triumph in the pool yesterday, I headed out for my Sunday bike ride this morning.
The alarm went off at 06:00 . . . and I woke with a start at 06:20. It then took me an hour to get going - breakfast of porridge, peanut butter & ginger marmalade, washed down with pineapple & grapefruit juice; making up my fluids for the ride (2 x 750ml bottles - second bottle cage now fitted to Gina); listening to the weather forecast & deciding what to wear; getting dressed; making sure I avoided the problems from this week’s Wednesday run; and generally faffing about. I really don’t know why, but it always seems to take me an hour to get going!
Having headed South last week, I decided to go North today. Up the coast to Blyth, before turning inland to Morpeth, heading cross-country to Belsay (lots of little rolling hills - work those gears!), and then back home via Newcastle Airport (DUCK!). Since I nearly got myslef bonked out last week, I took no chances, and plenty of fuel with me - as well as the 1.5l of sugary drinks, I had a Mars bar (~300cals), and two of my home-made protein bars from a batch I made up last night.
On the subject of these . . . Wife got the ingredients that weren’t already in the store cupboard this time, and managed to get proper dried cherries rather than the glacée cherries I’ve used before. These are MUCH better, and give a fantastic sour / sweet flavour to the finished product. She also picked up the ingredients for Clukasik (the Stubborn Polack)’s alternative recipe, which I’ll be trying out later in the week.
I took my very inexpensive HRM along, but only to use as an on-the-handlebars countdown timer alarm. This bleeped at me every 10 minutes to remind me to drink, and every 30 minutes, I also had something to eat.
As I turned onto the road at Belsay, I realised that there was probably some sort of road race / time trial event on. I stopped at the post office to have some more to eat, and swap the drinks bottles around, watching a procession of time-trialling speed demons zipping past. Some monster bikes here - one full carbon, disk-wheeled number sounding like a low-flying glider as it went into the turn past the entrance to Belsay Hall.
Fuelled and watered, I decided it was time to head home, and set off about 300 yds ahead of the next TT bike. I managed to keep ahead for about four miles, but he had me in the end on an easy, long-ish ascent, passing me as if I were riding backwards!
By the time I got home, my lower quads were starting to feel it, but overall, this was a great way to spend a couple of hours on a rather cold Sunday in June.
Workout:
- Type: Cycle
- Date: 06/17/2007
- Total Time: 2:49:00.00
- Distance: 48.5 miles
- Average Speed: 17.22 mph
- Max Speed: 30 mph
- Average Cadence: 101
- Max Cadence: 126
