Monthly Archives: October 2009

Pieces of me

I don’t usually go out on Mondays.  In fact it’s often my day off.  But since I had a day off yesterday, two in a row seemed a tad excessive.  Besides which after all the eating at the weekend, and general lack of decent nutrition over the last few weeks, I think I have some compensating to do.  On top of all that the weather forecast was reasonable (they lied!) and I felt like it would be a good ride.

And in some respect it was.  My legs were well in, it was feeling pretty easy, the roads were quiet, and up until nearly the end there wasn’t much wind.  However there was grey blanket cloud.  Which got lower and lower until it became cycling through cloud – aka drizzle.  When it lifted, it moved on to proper rain instead!  I nearly wimped out and cut my route short, but I stuck to the plan – I’m stubborn like that.

I only did the usual kind of loop.  Even taking the basic loop and adding extras like Burtle and Nyland I was hard pushed to get much over 2 hours though, which is a continual problem.  If you get faster, your normal routes get quicker!

Cycling time: 2:14:26
Distance: 35.06 miles
Avs: 15.6 mph
ODO: 2261 miles

I was fairly fast, so that’s good.  I was a bit twitched by the wet roads – I’m working on the skittish thing, but my bike is definitely less sticky in wet weather which really doesn’t help.  Still, I stayed on, and as I’ve said before, any ride where I stay on the bike is a good one! 😀

In other news I saw a physio today – conveniently my local surgery seems to have one now.  Turns out he cycles – how handy is that?!  He’s given me some exercises for the knee and the shoulder.  Broken bones, or bits thereof, take longer to heal than you’d think apparently.  And knees take ages too as that particular bit of muscle has a crappy blood supply so even with the cleat changes having helped it won’t heal overnight.  I think I’m just getting old and starting to fall apart *grin*.

Day Tripper

I am forever cycling around in circles.  And with the weather worsening, presumably they will be ever decreasing circles.

So it came as a nice change when the opportunity to do something different arose this weekend.  Hubby and I had a weekend away planned  – delayed anniversary celebration – at a restaurant with rooms called Little Barwick House, in Barwick, which is the other side of Yeovil.  After a quick peek with google maps, I realised that that’s not actually all that far from here.  Rather than spend two hours in the gym waiting for youngest to finish bouncing, I decided I would cycle to our destination.

I spent ages on Bike Route Toaster sorting my route out.  There are more direct routes, but I wanted to stick to the quieter back roads so as to enjoy my ride more.  I printed out my route, the cue sheet, and the directions from the hotel.  BRT had it down as around 3 1/2 hours riding which, for 36 odd miles, seemed a bit much but I went with it and left at 11:00am with 2:30pm as my goal arrival time.

The first hour or so was pretty standard stuff – basically heading fairly straight south for High Ham Hill.  It’s still a very long hill!  Having done it a couple of weeks ago it did hold less fear for me than before tho’.  It’s just a shame there was no nice friendly feed stop at the top this time around!

From there it was a nice long down into Langport before turning left and into unknown territory, which is where it started to get more fun.  Even in the light drizzle, it was definitely more interesting than the familiar.  It felt a bit like being on holiday, and quite L2P – cycling through unknown but pretty villages and towns.  Muchelney Abbey was as pretty as ever, Kingsbury Episcopi, Coat, Ash, Martock and Montacute were all lovely with their yellow stone buildings and olde worlde charm.

The roads were pretty quiet, which presumably explains why there is no need for road signs..  I did get lost a couple of times, which is why I ended up in Ash.  A nice fellow cyclist helped me out in Martock as well, when the direction to Montacute was none too obvious.  Still, no serious diversions taken, and I knew roughly where I was, so there was no panicking going on and I muddled my way back to join up with where I was meant to be.

The country charm wore off a bit on the main relief road around Yeovil but by that time I knew I was nearly there.  After an unexpected up hill slog, it was basically all down hill to the little village of Barwick.

Cycling time: 2:39:33
Distance: 40.6 miles
Avs: 15.2 mph
ODO: 2226 miles

The weather was pretty windy and not all that warm.  One reason why an mp3 is handy is that it blocks out the wind noise so you notice it less.  It wasn’t a constant wind either, so was more annoying for the occasions where it caught me through a gap in the hedge and I’d suddenly find myself a foot further to left than I’d mean to be!  As I’ve already mentioned, there was some drizzle for a while in the middle there too, which was less than attractive but luckily it cleared up after a while.

I’ve tweaked my route to show the accidental detour I took – and apparently I did 1350ft of climbing.  Not a lot I guess but enough for me.  I still can’t figure out why it’s supposed to take 3 1/2 hours + though – as you can see, it took me nowhere near that!

I enjoyed my little adventure a lot – and felt very proud of myself for some reason 🙂

The winds of change

I went cycling with a guy I know this morning, which made a change.  As did the whole two days in a row thing, but I’m trying not to waste the last remaining days of tolerable weather.  If I head out tomorrow as planned, I may even make it three days in a row!

It may have still been dry, but it was noticeably colder than yesterday.  Long sleeves and the windproof gilet today which, unlike yesterday, stayed on.  The seasons are changing…  As we came back from our coffee stop in Glastonbury an unwelcome chilly head/side wind had appeared too, which we both agreed hadn’t been there on the way out.  If it had been, I’d have been going much faster!

Cycling time: 2:04:49
Distance: 32.9 miles
Avs: 15.8 mph
ODO: 2186 miles

We followed the KISS principle (that’s Keep It Simple, Stupid) and stuck to the usual kinda route – out to Glastonbury for coffee and back again.  For various reasons, not least of which was me being lazy, we kept it mostly flat.  My knee was twinging a bit by Wedmore so that was just as well.  Nowt wrong with flat!  I think the speed was pretty good, he thinks we were pootling…ah well.  My standards are clearly lower *grin*.  Still, all in all, it was a pretty good couple of hours in the saddle.

In other mental meanderings, I’m trying to find a way of making money out of my cycling obsession.  Which may mean applying for a job (shock, horror)… or “thinking outside of the box” and trying to find another way of doing it.  So if you’ve got any ideas for me…fire away!

Life in the Slow Lane

It’s definitely harder to train when there’s no goal in sight.  I’m only getting out twice a week at the moment, if that, and seem to end up at the gym more often as it fits around life slightly more easily.  As the weather worsens and the days shorten, I don’t expect things are going to improve any time soon.  So it was good to get out with G today, even if it wasn’t for very long.  She had errands to run in Burnham so we looped to there and back.

Cycling time: 1:51:57
Distance: 29.18 miles
Avs: 15.6 mph
ODO: 2153 miles

Weather was nice, though with the chill that’s now in the air, so definitely long sleeves today.  Not yet had to resort to long tights tho’…I’ll be putting that off as long as possible.

Like it or not, I feel slower with G – probably because she makes it all look so effortless that you become more aware of the effort you’re making by comparison.  Or something like that.  I wasn’t quite on form either, so on balance, I guess it went ok.