A well deserved rest

I gave my bike (and me) a well deserved rest today. Having done the longest ride I've ever done on Saturday (exceeding my previous by 10 miles) and my most miles in a weekend (exceeding my previous by 20 miles), I decided it would be sensible to take a day off.

In any case, I had booked my bike in for a service.

I'm not sure whether to be proud or not, but I needed a new chain for my bike. Good old Beyond Mountain Bikes did a wonderful job doing the service, and asked if I had been pushing hard. As you'll know if you read this blog, I've been pushing hard for me, but I dont think in the grand scheme of things I pushed that hard such that I'd be stretching my chain. I can only assume the one supplied with the bike was not that good a quality, and after 600 miles that is just normal wear and tear. Anyhow Beyond Mountain Bikes fitted a new dura-ace chain which is apparently far superior to the one I had previously. They also did a fantastic job cleaning & re-lubing the bike. It looks like new - I felt very guilty for the state I left it with them.

I used my free time to positive effect though, and added the Latest News & Thankyous pages to the website.

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...

The website is live!

One of the main pieces of feedback from the kick-off meeting is that we should get the website live. Hences it is done (ok it's basic....) - take a look www.raceforchase.co.uk