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!

Quick fifty

The plan yesterday had been to leave around the same time as we will be leaving on the ride itself, and to do approx half-distance by lunchtime. Hence we were very pleased to do 111 miles and still be back in time for lunch.

After the bad start yesterday, I was determined to get out on the bike again. Having spoken to Ciaran and Paul, I had a 6am start option with Ciaran for a "quick fifty" (as he described it) or an 11am start with Paul for a similar distance.

I opted for the early start so Jules & I could have the rest of the day enjoying the fastastic weather we're having.

Ciarans route is very similar to the 50 we did last Sunday afternoon except it goes slightly north of Bentley and on up to Crondall, then back through Farnham to the A31 and along the Hogs back home.

Again we set out at a good pace. I was feeling so much better today (thank goodness!). I was zipping up the hills on the long slog from Milford to Haslemere through Grayswood, and my heart rate stayed nice in the 160s.

Between Liphook & Bentley we were cycling into a headwind which slowed us down a bit, and we made our first stop just north of Bentley. The scenery around there is just wonderful, and today I was in more of a mood to enjoy it!

We got home after 2:55 in the saddle, and only then did I realise why Ciaran's "quick fifty" is so quick: it's only 47 miles long!!!

Still; a good time for a hilly route & into the wind for a good portion. I think I deserve the rest of the day off!!

Sore Bums!

So much for a good nights sleep. The thing about a long bike ride is that you sweat. Therefore you spend a lot of time taking on liquid to make sure you dont get dehydrated. On the ride yesterday and after I got home, I drank just under 5 litres of liquid (a combination of carbohydrate drinks, protein drinks & electrolytic drinks). Unfortunately if you dont get the timing right, and sweat off all the extra liquid you've taken on board, your body has to get rid of it some other way.

Therefore I did not get the good night sleep I had hoped for!

Joining John & Tim for breakfast, I was complaining about my bum. It felt uncomfortable enough to share my discomfort with some other guys - you know? Anyway John piped up that he thought it might have something to do with the saddles, which Tim & I found most insightful.

Simon had fixed his tyre, so the 7 of us were up, breakfasted and ready to go by 7am. Just before setting off Henry stated that his bum was so sore that it felt like he had been violated in his sleep.

We spent some time trying to decide which of Henry & John's observations were the funniest.

The good news was that as soon as we set off, I realised that in fact the pain in my bum was not as bad as all that. Nope - it was much worse when I sat back on the saddle!

We did my 60 mile loop over the 5 mile ascent between Borden & Hindhead. On the way up that hill, after about 40 miles, Henry's knee started to get very painful & Ciaran's rear sprocket broke hence they both had to drop out of the training ride. Hopefully Henry's knee is just because he did such a big jump yesterday in terms of his longest ride.

Back at the house again, we stopped for some sandwiches & a drink. If it was hard first thing this morning to get going again after 150 miles yesterday, it was even harder to get going again this afternoon having done that PLUS 60 miles this morning already!!

Still, set off we did, and we completed the final 50 in 3 hours which was pretty good. This time Ciaran & Jules followed us around for much of the route in a car to get some more photos.

250 miles this weekend. The longest I've ever done, and the most I will do prior to the ride itself.

Yikes.

56 Miler Part 3

I had to do it again! Maybe if I really push I could break the 3 hours, but at least I could try out the 'shadow rider' feature on the Garmin.

I must admit, it was hard going to start with and I found the Garmin a bit confusing to start with. I knew I was either ahead or behind, but it was not immediately apparent which. The funny thing was that, on the assumption that I was behind, it kind of motivated me to push harder. This made me more tired, and the gap between the two got bigger. I became more and more paranoid that I was dropping futher and further behind!!

By the time I got to the long 5 mile hill, I gave up worrying about it, and just pushed as hard as I dared whilst making sure I had enough energy to get home again.

It was only when I got home, and the Garmin beeped a little congratulatory tune at me to tell me I had beaten my Friday time by 5 minutes.

168 miles over the weekend, all at an average speed well over 17 mph! Not bad for a quiet weekend!

56 Miler Part 1

I decided to take it easy this weekend, as I did a good distance last weekend, and wanted to give my body a bit of a break. Having said that, I was at a wedding on Friday afternoon, so I thought a quick 50 miler might be in order!

Once again the 2 G's (Google & Garmin) came up trumps, and I found a nice route of 56 miles down the A31 to Alton, then up to Hindhead and Haslemere and across to the A283 and back to Guildford.

I wasn't paying attention when I planned the route, and so didn't notice that I couldn't get off the A31 where I wanted to, and hence the route ended up being a bit longer than planned.

I'd promised Jules I'd be back by 10, and set off just before 7am. It was busy - Friday morning rush hour, but I made good time and was searching for the way off the A31 after an hour.

Then travelling from Borden to Hindhead I found a fantastic hill. It wasn't too steep, but it went on for about 5 miles. Must show it to Paul tomorrow!

By 9am I was in Haslemere and wondering how on earth I was going to get back to Guildford by 10am. I pushed on hard, and surprised myself when I got back in just after 10. 56 miles in about 3 hours 10 minutes!

My longest ride yet

Following a week of not quite getting around to doing much training (at least, after my ride on Monday), I was keen to get out for a ride again this weekend.

Paul had suggested we go for a longer ride, and Ciaran and Simon were going to join us for part of it. I google-mapped a route from Guildford to Brighton, along the coast to Portsmouth, and then back up the A31 to Guildford again. This looked like it would be something between 140 and 150 miles, and offered Simon and Ciaran the option of turning back to Guildford at Worthing or Chichester depending on how time was going.

Paul, Simon & I set off around 7:30am; Ciaran couldn't make it.

It was a slightly different route to Brighton than our previous ride. This time we went over "Devil's Dyke" instead of "Ditchling Beacon". We had some debate over which was worse. Ditchling goes from 130ft to 750ft in a mile. Devil's Dyke goes from sea level to 170ft in 3 miles, then down to 120ft and back up to 460ft in 2 miles then down to 320ft to 460ft in a mile; a total climb of 670ft spread over 8 miles. I still say Ditchling is harder, but Devil's Dyke definitely took longer!

After that it was a nice cruise down into Brighton where we (ok...Simon) found a cafe which served sausage sarnies & cups of tea. We convinced ourselves this was the right thing to do, and sat down enjoying the summer breeze from the seafront.

Refreshed, we set off with the wind behind us along the coast towards Portsmouth. Going through Arundel we were reminded it was the bank holiday weekend by the amount of traffic. I'm sure our journey was quicker than many of the people sitting in that queue!

Between Arundel & Chichester, Simon turned of towards home and Paul and I continued towards Portsmouth.

Just outside Portsmouth, we turned off towards Wickham for a nice bit of cross-country riding out of the traffic. This was really enjoyable, although we lost our way a couple of times because I had not put enough way-points into the Garmin. This didn't really matter though, and we made our way through the country lanes eventually ending up at Arlesford.

Now on familiar ground, we upped the pace a bit for the homeward leg of the journey. We lost about 20 minutes because I got a puncture between Four Marks and Alton, but other than that we are well-used to the A31 and it is good fast easy-going. Having said that, the up-hills were getting harder and harder the more miles we did, so I was extremely glad to get home.

This was my longest ride yet at 145 miles and we did it in a good time of 8 hours 45 minutes!! Rest day tomorrow!

Surrey Hills

Having conquered Shap, I was inspired to do some more hills. So I set out for another 50 mile trek across the hills near my home.

I actually ended up doing more ascent & descent than I had in the Lake District, but the hills were much smaller!!

London bound

Today was the London marathon, and Jules had volunteered to help the CHASE support team look after the 50 or so people who were running in support of CHASE. Hence I had the whole day to go out on the bike! (although I had promised to get back by 2pm to do a few things around the house).

Paul & Simon both said they could come along for a while, and we all met up at 7am. Paul had to be home by 10am, so we thought we'd gad about a bit on the hills around Dorking again. We were a little late setting off, and Paul had yet another puncture just outside Guildford. By the time we'd fixed that and got going again, it was 8 o'clock already and we'd only done about 3 miles!!

Simon showed us a less steep route up Ranmore, which was a really nice climb. Then we went down via West Humble towards Boxhill.

Paul & I were much faster up Boxhill this week than last time we did it, and we stopped at the top for a quick snack & a drink. We then took a lovely route off Boxhill, again guided by Simon, and found ourselves at the base of Boxhill where we'd started.

At this point, Paul & I went ahead, and returned up Ranmore the same way we had come down.

At East Horsley, Paul had to head home & I was on my own. My plan was to cycle in towards London. I had a route planned, and was keen to try it out. It went from East Horsley to Cobham, and then past Claygate towards Esher & Kingston. I made good time, but by the time I'd got to Claygate it was pouring with rain. I carried on to Kingston but by then I was soaked & quite cold, and I decided to head back towards Guildford.

It was a good decision, because the storm was travelling west to east and I was soon out of the rain. Back at East Horsley, time was ticking on, so I decided to go home.

Another 70 miler, although a lot slower than yesterdays!!

Back to Chichester

John cycled down from Bishops Stortford to Guildford yesterday afternoon. He did really well, as it's 80+ miles and he was by himself.

He stayed with us on Friday night and then Paul joined us on Saturday so the three of us could cycle to Worthing via Chichester. John only wanted to go to Worthing where he was visiting family. I say "only", but Guildford to Worthing via Chichester is around 50 miles which is quite impressive the morning after an 80 mile bike ride the previous afternoon! Then Paul and I would head home, hopefully ending up between 90-100 miles.


View Larger Map

We set off around 6:45 after a breakfast and juice. We travelled down past CHASE and out towards Godalming then Haslemere. I dont recall cycling south on this road before. There were some great hills!! (although "great" wasn't a word I heard John using!). After 30 miles or so we stopped for 2nd breakfast at Singleton. I must have driven through it many times, but had never realised what a beautiful little village Singleton is.

I had Google'd a route into the Garmin around the back of Goodwood racecourse to avoid having to go through Chichester centre. Once again, I was really pleased with the Garmin under these circumstances. It was not an obvious route, and certainly not one that any of us had done before, but we found our way down to the A27 without incident. Then it was just a case of blasting along the A27 for 20 miles until we hit Worthing. This part of the trip was very quick due to the road being pretty flat.

At Worthing, about 1/2 mile from where we were dropping John off, we noticed Paul had a puncture. So we stopped and changed his tube and said farewell to John.

Paul and I were feeling great. 50 miles already, and we were doing fine. Just outside Worthing, coming up the A24, there is quite a long hill and we realised why we were feeling so good; the wind had been behind us on the way down!! It was tough going, and it took us pretty much the same amount of time to go 40 miles home as it did to go 50 miles down there! Although part of that was due to Paul getting another puncture, and us stopping to pump his tyre up a few times and eventually changing the tube again at Cranleigh.

When we eventually got home, I felt the best I've felt after a ride of that distance. Maybe I'll manage a ride tomorrow, although the weather forecast predicts snow.

Leith Hill is easy!

Leith Hill is easy
Leith Hill is easy
Leith Hill is easy
.....
if I keep telling myself, perhaps one day I'll believe it!

Paul and I went out for a 50+ miler this morning. We both left at 7am, and met up at Clandon. Paul has a good 50 mile circuit which takes in Ranmore Common and Leith Hill to warm up with for 20 miles, and then a 25 mile stretch of fairly flat road meandering around Cranleigh and finally 5 miles back to Guildford up Newlands Corner.

We made pretty good time really, 3 hours 20 minutes of cycling, so we were back by 10:30ish.

Paul was looking strong, so I drafted behind him for the last 20 miles. Certainly a lot easier going than it was on Friday!!

A trip to the New Forest

We had been invited to visit our friends Richard and Kirsten in Milford On Sea for the weekend. I did the Google maps search, and found it is just over 70 miles from Guildford to Milford. I decided it would be a good challenge to cycle down on the Saturday and cycle back on the sunday.

I set off around 8am on Saturday, and had just joined the Hogs Back just outside Guildford when I cycled over some broken glass & slashed my front tyre and tube. Although I had a spare tube with me I hadn't really planned for losing a tyre. I called Jules, and she quickly came to my rescue with a spare tyre, tube & race pump. It was around 9am by the time I'd called Jules, she'd found the stuff, come out to meet me and I'd fitted the new tyre.

Based on my previous 70 mile rides, I'd planned on 4.5 - 5 hours, and we were aiming to be there for lunch around 1pm; I was going to be late!

Next I learnt why we are cycling from Land's End to John O'Groats (and not the other direction). People had told me it is because the wind generally blows from the south west, but I'd always thought this cant be that significant. How wrong I was! The wind was in my face all the way down and it was really hard work. I managed to keep a fair speed up, but it was a real struggle; my heart rate seemed my higher that normal, but my speed was slower. I eventually got there at 1:45 after over 5 hours of cycling. Tired and hungry and not looking forward to the return trip.

On arrival I told Richard I had now done around 850 miles on my bike since buying it at the end of December. I was quite pleased with this til he pointed out that I need to be able to do that distance in a week in June. :-(

We had a lovely afternoon with our hosts and the kids, and delicious food. I managed to stay awake and chat as long as the others did, but eventually had to suggest bed (most unlike me to be the first to suggest this).

I was up first this morning. Joseph (Richard and Kirsten's oldest) had serenaded us with his trumpet skills over breakfast, and then dragged me out for a warm-up ride on his bike which was fun. Then JP, a work colleague and friend who lives down the road from Richard and Kirsten, and who had offered to accompany me to Winchester, arrived at 8 on the dot as arranged. After 'Goodbyes' and 'Thankyous', off we set on the return trip.

JP is quicker than I am on the hills. Actually to be precise, he is quicker than me on the flat too, but he is substantially quicker on hills. I tried to blame this on my previous days exertions until I found out that he had gone for a 21 mile run on Saturday which puts my 70 mile ride to shame!! We made Winchester in pretty good time compared to the trip down, and arrived in just under 2 hours. I phoned Jules to let her know my progress, and had a quick snack and a rest with JP.

Having left JP in Winchester I started off on the worst section of the trip down (Alton to Winchester had been really hard work yesterday). It felt like I was flying today. I was much quicker and my heart rate was lower; not having the wind in your face makes so much difference. I managed to make it home in 4.5 hours even though I'd travelled 2 miles further with JP's 'short-cuts' around Brokenhurst & Lyndhurst.

It felt so good to get home having cycled all that way. For a few seconds it felt like a big achievement, then I realised I need to do even more next week....

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.

Time for a service

I've booked by bike in for it's first service today. I've done 600 miles on it, and I've only had it just over a month. I'm pretty sure thats more miles than I've done in total for the rest of my life prior to that month!!!

I wanted to do a 30 mile ride, so GoogleMapped a route from home to Beyond Mountain Bikes via East Horsley, Ranmore Common, Dorking, Coldharbour, Ewshot & Cranleigh.

I found it really hard to get going. My legs just didn't seem to want to move. After 8 miles or so I turned off towards Ranmore which I had remembered as being fairly flat woodland road. That was in a car. There is actually quite a steep hill before the nice flat woodland road. I really struggled up it. A group of cyclists overtook me on the hill and asked if I was ok!!

I learnt a good lesson today: read the names of the roads before you set off on a route. After the unexpected climb at Ranmore, and having cycled through Dorking I then found myself on the Leith Hill road. Bizarrely that lead to Leith Hill, which I'm sure I remember is the largest hill in Surrey.

Leith Hill certainly made me realise the hill at Ranmore wasn't that bad. I struggled to go fast enough to stop my Garmin going into automatic pause mode.

Once I got to the top of Leith Hill, my legs finally woke up, and I ended up doing the 30 miles in the 2 hours I had planned, despite the hills.

Rest day tomorrow though....

Lost cadence sensor

I set out for another ride this morning. Only 27 miles (when did the words "only" and "27 miles" get permission to sit next to each other in my vocabulary?!). My bum was a bit sore to start with after the ride on Saturday, but soon warmed up.

As we set off, I noticed my cadence sensor had fallen off - have to order a new one I guess. The ride was good; except my knee was aching a bit on the up-hills. We adjusted the saddle a bit & that seemed to help. We finished the ride in under 2 hours.

On arriving home, I realised I could figure out where I lost my cadence sensor by looking at the route from the Garmin - there would be a point from the ride yesterday where the cadence would go from "something" to "nothing". I found the point on the ride & went to have a look, but it just happened to be near the junction between the Hogs Back and the Farnham road into Guildford - not an ideal place to find a small piece of plastic with a magnet in it.

Now we're getting somewhere!!

It's getting light earlier now, so we set off sharper today. Mad Paul still insists on cycling from his house to mine, so he ends up doing an extra 14 miles or so on me. I'd like to say he needs the extra training, but in fact the reverse is true; I'm sure I used to be fitter than he did. When did that happen? :-)

Anyhow, we set off at 8am with promises from the weathermen of rainshowers later in the morning. It seems that whatever the weathermen say is pretty much the most likely thing not to happen. So it was today. The rain never materialised, although it was a bit blustery. Largely the same route as last weekend via Haslemere, but with an extra 10 miles added at the southern end. 55 miles!!!!! Feeling good now. 50 miles was a mental objective for me. Better think of another one now. And that blummin hill at Hindhead felt a lot better today.

Ciaran, having told Simon we were starting at 8, woke up at 8 for an 8:30 start. So we set off without him and he promised to catch us up. We took a slight detour 8 miles in at Cranleigh, and it must have been at that point that Ciaran caught up and overtook us. I'm obviously not taking any pleasure thinking of him pushing himself for 50 miles trying to catch us up, but he got home about 30 minutes before we did!!!

Going for another ride tommorrow morning. Will be interesting to see how my bum feels...

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....