Training ride 3 (Day2) : Chesham

Ciaran, Simon and I set off at 6am on Sunday to meet Paul on the way up to Windsor. Plan was to meet Rich on the normal loop to the west of Windsor. Paul managed to get another puncture in almos exactly the same place as last time we met up there - he really hasn't had much luck recently. Still, at least his cycling shorts weren't foaming: that would be very embarrasing.

We met up with Rich easily enough, and then he took us on a tour of Berkshire & Buckinghamshire ending up near his house in Chesham.

At around 9am, Simon mentioned the idea of a bacon sandwich. How completely unfair. I dont remember much about the rest of the ride, so focussed was I on getting home to have a bacon butty!!!

Ok - I remember some of it. Rich took us over some of his favourite hills. They weren't really what we call hills in Surrey, but they at least kept us warm!! Once we got to Chesham, we turned around and headed home.

Again I am struck with how much I have progressed, because when we arrived at Windsor on the way back I remember thinking "nearly home"; where we still had 25 miles to do. I can't help thinking back to December and our first 22 mile training ride and how far that seemed!!

Anyway, we got home having done almost 90 miles after 6 hours. So that makes almost 200 miles in a weekend; 13 hours in the saddle; and the knowledge that I can actually cycle that far in that time - just need to be able to do it in one day now.

Cycling to Stratford on Avon - am I mad?

We'd planned to go see my mum for Easter today (especially as my nephew Stewart will be there), so having Google-mapped a route & found it possible to cycle, I decided this would be a good training opportunity.

The route from Guildford goes via Bracknell, Henley, Wallingford, Oxford, Woodstock and Chipping Norton and is almost exactly 100 miles by the time I've tweaked it into the Garmin.

Ciaran called last night, and said he'd accompany me for the first few miles, and we set off at 7am. As normal, the weathermen got it wrong, and the piece about sleet/snow & cold temperatures was wrong, but they did get the wind right. Typically, my route heads straight into where the 23 mph wind is coming from. Hence it was slower going than I've been used to recently, but we did ok.

We stopped for Breakfast at Henley feeling great, although I noticed my tyre was flat so we fixed a puncture and set off again. Ciaran was kindly doing most of the work with the wind because he knew he had it behind him for the return trip, and I was drafting behind him.

Things got a bit slower as we climbed the Chilterns, as the wind picked up a bit or we were a bit more exposed to it. Either way, it was tough going at times. 10 miles from Oxford Ciaran decided he wanted to go all the way to Oxford because a) It would be great to be able to say he cycled to Oxford and back and b) he would make his first 100 miler of the year! This suited me just fine, and we clicked over 50 miles just before the ring-road at Oxford. We had a quick break and a snack, and then I noticed I had another puncture! I only had one spare tube, so we had to actually fix this one :-(

Because of the wind, it had taken us 3 hours 40 minutes to get here, and I new the next 50 miles would be harder without Ciaran as a wind-break.

Ciaran turned home and whizzed off with the wind behind him, and I set off with my head down towards the lovely ring-road at Oxford.

I got through Oxford fairly quickly (it's about 8 miles from where we stopped to the junction with the A44 and I did it in about 25 minutes). The shelter provided by the buildings meant that the wind was not as noticable, and the cycle-lanes through Oxford centre made the going very easy.

Jules had left the house around 10:30 with the plan to meet me after 60 miles or so. So I gave her a quick call to say I was on the A44, so she should not be able to miss me. I grabbed another quick snack & a drink, and put my head down again towards Woodstock. By now the wind had really picked up, and because the A44 is so exposed, the going was very tough. It took me 45 minutes to go 7 miles and I was really struggling. I was in my lowest gear and it felt like I could barely move. At one point I was litterly blown sideways off the road.

I was very glad when Jules finally caught me up, then immediately disheartened as she appeared to beep in a friendly way as she passed me as if to see "see you at mums" and then entirely relieved to see her waiting in the next layby!!!

As it turned out, we met up at a pub called the Duke of Malborough. It had just started to sleet, so I decided I'd had enough training for one day, and sat down for a hugh lasagne & chips and a pint of bitter lemon and soda-water.

Bonking with Paul

Paul and I set off for a ride of 85 miles. The weather was good; it was mild and dry, although it was a bit windy.

We planned to stop after 30 and 60 miles to have a quick rest and a snack.

The ride started well. I took Paul over a new hill I found between East Horsley and Shere. Its a great hill - nice gradual incline on a quiet road. It starts around 300 ft and climbs to about 700 ft over about 2.5 miles and then drops to just over 200ft and back up to nearly 500 ft over the next 3.5 miles. Then there is a fantastic 10 mile downhill all the way to Abinger Hammer.

After about 30 miles, on the road between Billingshurst & Petworth, we stopped for a snack & a rest. I had run out of energy bars, so had brought some malt-loaf for a change. Somehow I had got a drawing pin in my front tyre, so we wasted some time changing the tube & re-inflating the tyre.

Somewhat behind time, we set off again feeling good. As we approached Petworth I started to struggle a bit and my legs felt heavy and by the time we got to Fernhurst I had to stop. It was really strange, I was just exhausted, and couldn't even stand up. I wondered if I was short of energy, and Paul gave me one of his energy bars. After a short break we set off again, but I still could not seem to get much speed up, and for the next 10 miles our average speed dropped off.

By this time, due to the wasted time on the puncture, and the lack of pace, we were getting seriously late - Paul had to be home by 1:30. We'd arrived at Liss, so we stopped quickly again to phone home & warn the girls we were likely to be late. I was very tempted to ask Jules to come and pick me up, because I was a bit worried about pushing myself too hard. However, when I spoke to her she didn't sound very well, so I decided to push on.

When we set off again, I started to feel much better, and by the time we got to Alton after another 10 miles, we were back on good pace. It was 12:30, and we still had over 20 miles to go to Guildford - looked like Paul would be really late. However, once we were on the A31, we suddenly had the wind behind us on a nice flat bit of road. We decided to try out the "big cogs", and managed to get to Guildford inside an hour - it felt fantastic to be racing along at over 20 miles an hour for that length of time!!!

On arriving home, and describing to Ciaran what had happened, he reckoned I had "bonked". This is when your body has used up all its stores of glycogen, and you become extremely debilitated (click on it for more details!!!).

So - a bit of a struggle, but my longest ride yet. 88 miles. :-)