Ciarans winter warmer!

I did the same 40 mile route twice this weekend. On Saturday with Ciaran, and on Sunday with both Ciaran and Simon.

I had wanted to show Ciaran the route that Rich's friend Fraser had taken us on a week ago, but Ciaran had also wanted to show me a route he does over the winter for base training. Basically it takes in a bunch of hills.

Funny thing was it was largely the same route that Fraser had done (except we did not do White Down hill on Ciarans route, instead looping back on ourselves and heading back the way we had come.

I felt rubbish on Saturday - especially on the hills. Not sure why, maybe lack of sleep. I was out late on Thursday night at the Times Charity awards where CHASE had been nominated for a prize. Thankfully I felt much better on Sunday. So, apart from not drinking I will now need to make sure I get enough sleep up to the ride!

The Garmin was also not on top form on Saturday. When I loaded the route onto my computer when we returned, the route itself looked right, but the elevation was way off. It was quite wet and cloudy, so I wonder if it could not get a good enough signal. I've included the two elevations below so you can see how far out it was (the top one is Sunday and looks right to me)!

Some lovely hills before breakfast

Off cycling on my own again. I managed to drag myself out of bed in time to leave at 6am again. I was aiming to get back by 9am, and planning just to do some hills.

I couldn't help thinking about the people doing the London to Brighton today. I wonder how they are getting on. I was tempted to text Maire (on my team, who is doing London to Brighton) to wish her well and tell her I was doing more hills than she was. Couldn't decide if this would make her feel better or worse, so decided against it.

I set out to try and do the same route that Fraser had shown us yesterday, but ended up missing a left turn and just seeing where I ended up.

It was a beautiful morning, and as soon as I got down off a hill I tried to find another one to go up!! I'm not going to describe the roue because it was not exactly a straight line. However, you can see the profile of the hills in the picture!

Cold start again

I'm not quite sure how, but I managed to get up early and go out on the bike for 40 miles today.

We were going to visit Jules' parents in Farnham, so I found a route via Cranleigh, Loxwood & Milford which made it a decent number of miles. I managed it in 2 1/2 hours which I was pleased with; especially as the hills were bigger than google maps had made apparent!

I learnt some more about my Garmin today. Basically the route was a new one, and since I was riding alone, I loaded the route into the Garmin so it could direct me. I know most of the route, except the bit between Milford and Farnham, where I was hoping to take a short-cut through Seale. However, I did not notice the error when I loaded the route into the Garmin which said "route truncated". It gave me directions all the way to Milford, and then said I had arrived at my destination. Great!! I managed to find my way ok, but ended up doing an extra 3 miles or so.

As an aside here, the Garmin is an excellent device. However the software it comes with is not so great. I have to back up my data every time I use it in order not to lose data for previous rides I've done. Also the mapping software it comes with is rubbish (at least in the uk). Pretty much only the A roads are available, and since most of my routes are B roads for training, you can't plan a route using it. I therefore use GoogleMaps to plan my route, get the url and add the option "&output=js" to the end, save the resulting web-page and then use some freeware called GPSBabel to translate the Google data into Garmin data.

Anyhow; enough moaning. I beat my personal best for mileage again this weekend. 110 miles.

Life begins at 40

Today I turned 40 years old. I started my new year with a 50 mile bike ride (what else) - hence the first person to see me that old was Simon, who seems to be my de facto training buddy these days. He didn't say I looked old or anything, and none of my joints suddenly gave way on the ride, so maybe being 40 isn't so bad after all.


We set out around 7:30, and the temperature was -2 degrees celcuis. That's quite cold if you haven't tried it. We managed almost exactly 50 miles in just a little over 3 hours, so I was quite pleased with that pace; especially for an old fella.



This is a picture of me on my return when Jules presented me with a pile of cards which all appeared to have the objective of rubbing it in how old I was.

We had a bit of a gathering in the evening which was fun, and I even managed to stay awake after the ride, through setting the house up with balloons and food and drink, through partying til 1:30 Sunday morning.

Got some great presents including 6 bottles of Scotch. Simon got me a head-warmer thing to go under my helmet when cycling....would've been nice this morning! I also got some compressed air canisters for quickly re-inflating a tyre which are very cool.

Why do I still feel guilty?

Yesterday I had good intentions. I had signed up for a 90 minute spin session at the gym, but it was full. I therefore decided to do some work on the turbo.

However, when I got home Jules & I realised we had a few bits to do on the website, and some preparation for a meeting with CHASE about the ride today.

I therefore convinced myself that it made sense to have a night off training (after all I had done 40 miles the day before....my second longest bike ride ever....). I felt awful.

So today when I got home it was straight on the turbo trainer for an hour. It was a good session, and I was pleased with my performance, but I still cant beat off the guilt for not doing anything yesterday!

40 miler!

Ciarán, Simon and I set out for a longer ride this morning. The weather was better than it was supposed to be according to the weathermen, but nonetheless quite blustery which made the going a bit tough at times.

We set out in a similar direction to my 35 mile route, but continued on into Bramley, then Chiddingfold, Haslemere, Hindhead then up to the Hogs Back back to Guildford. It was a good ride, with a particularly horrible hill out of Hindhead right on through Haslemere. According to my Garmin, we went from 200 ft to 850 ft. I need to work on my ascents - but I'm definitely getting better the more I do. The best thing was coming down the hill the other side - we hit 35 mph at one point.

I'm still not quite used to the distance you can achieve on a road-bike. I can't believe I cycled to Haslemere today....