This week I have mostly
been doing; Riding my bike
The title should really
be read in the voice of Jesse from The Fast Show but as I can only write on
here you will have to do your own voices.
As you have probably
noticed the XCRacer/Scimitar team are taking
it in turns to describe a week of their training, and this week you have got me. I
was actually supposed to be doing last week, but someone who shall remain
nameless (in order to avoid embarrassing Phil) can’t read a simple schedule and
leapt in prematurely and nicked my week off me. I had almost finished writing
it when I spotted this treachery and so rather than write a whole new one for
this week I have just added this paragraph and kept it until today, so this is
actually last week.
Unlike most of my team
mates I am not married and have no small children to worry about so can pretty
much just ride my bike whenever I feel like it. I tend not to plan things in
too much detail, I find that takes the fun out of riding and fun is of course
why we all do it. For the kind of racing I do, mainly longer ones such as 12
and 24hrs, just going out and riding lots is probably the best training anyway.
Saturday, 5 April:
This started as a fairly
dry and sunny day and so, for the first time this year, it was time to crack
out the summer road bike. Living in South Lincolnshire means that opportunities
for riding mountain bikes properly are somewhat limited. A bunch of us all meet
up at 8:30 on Saturday mornings to go for a ride. We follow what is, by
Lincolnshire standards, a reasonably hilly route and then stop at a cafe to eat
cake and tease the waitresses, before heading home again.
The ride to the meeting
point is about 10 miles for me, and we usually do about 60 miles, at which
point most people wimp out and call it a day. However, Richard and I carried on
to his house afterwards. I refilled my water bottle there and then continued
without him. It was just starting to rain by this time and so I got a bit damp
and, more irritatingly, got the posh bike a bit grubby on the way home. What’s
the saying? “Never cast a mudguard till June be out”. Something like that.
Total distance
ridden:103.6 miles
Sunday, 6 April:
Today was a bit damp and
generally miserable when I woke up, driech as they would say up north (my spell
checker doesn’t appear to like driech very much. Why will it do American but
not Scottish? I do find American spellings rather irritating.) Anyway, I
decided to abandon my brief flirtation with the summer bike and head back out
on the winter bike with it’s mudguards and sensible tyres, and a pocket full of
waterproofs. I stayed fairly near home, just doing some circuits, in case the
weather really did turn horrible and I wanted to call it a day. However, it
actually turned out to be rather nice, not too cold and no significant rain. It
was properly windy though, and whichever way I went I seemed to be heading into
it, I spent the whole day riding into a head wind.
Total distance ridden
105.0 miles.
Monday, 7 April;
Unfortunately I do have
to go to work every now and again, which is a shame as there are many other
things I would much rather be doing, most, but not quite all, of which involve
bikes. I just do some admin for a local accountancy practice so it’s hardly the
most physically demanding job and the hours are the bog-standard 9-5. Reading Donna’s blog last week I don’t envy her her job! [Week
before last – Ed] Work is just under 8 miles from my house, and it is
mostly quiet country roads and then a couple of miles of A road at the end.
Despite this the traffic in town means that it is about 5 minutes quicker to
ride than it is to drive. I am usually cutting it a bit fine as far as time
goes so I always ride in the short way.
I run at lunchtimes a few
times a week. I had a fractured kneecap back in December 2012 (ice-skating,
nothing to do with bikes. The other fractured kneecap of November 2006 was
bike-related. Both were surprisingly painful for such a small chip/crack) It is
only in the last couple of months that I have begun running again. I try to
avoid tarmac, due to other previous knee injuries which I’m sure you don’t want
to hear about, so I headed up the nearest ‘hill’ to the fields at the top. This
is the biggest hill near the town but this being Lincolnshire it is under 200ft
(no sniggering from the Welsh readers please!)
On Mondays I swim after
work. I started doing this in November last year as something warm to do in the
winter and have progressed rapidly from Completely Useless to Poor. I shall
stick with it and hope to have worked my way up to Average by the end of the
year. I have made some noticeable improvements already, for example I can now
breath on both sides, rather than just my left and am generally a bit faster.
It was mainly breathing we were working on tonight, and also some arm work
using the fins to help us concentrate on them.
The pool is in a
different town to the one where I work, and so I set off on the bike at 5pm.
The weather was OK when I left but I quickly found myself attempting to outrun
a rather large and very black cloud. I failed miserably at this and ended up
absolutely soaked and freezing cold by the time I arrived. Getting dressed
afterwards for the ride home my shorts were still wetter than my trunks were! I
had brought some dry socks and a dry base layer but unfortunately not gloves or
shorts. It had stopped raining by then though so it was a slightly nicer ride
home despite the unpleasantness of putting wet kit back on.
Total distance ridden:
37.8 miles
Running: 35 minutes
Swimming: 1 hour
It was still not as wet in here as it was outside!
Tuesday, 8 April
I rode to work again this
morning. It amazes me how many of my colleagues who live two miles away spend
their time whinging about traffic and parking, it would never even occur to me
to drive if I lived that close. These are the same people who moan about never being
able to lose weight, I wonder if these things may be related?
Normally on a Tuesday
evening I would play badminton for a couple of hours. Like swimming this is a
sport at which I am not very good at all but which I do just because it’s fun.
However, we play in the sports hall of the local college and this was closed
this week due to the Easter holidays so I went for a slightly extended ride
home instead.
Total distance ridden:
23.0 miles
Wednesday, 9 April
This was a pretty similar
day to yesterday, a short ride to work and then a slightly meandering route
home again in the evening, albeit a slightly different one.
I went for a run at
lunchtime, up the same hill as Monday but around some different fields at the
top. It was a lovely sunny day here. The flatness of Lincolnshire does put most
of my fellow bikers off the idea of living here but the weather is generally a
lot better than pretty much anywhere else in the UK. We have had a lovely
winter, only been cold enough for a frost half a dozen times and fairly dry. I
have seen on the news that this hasn’t been the case elsewhere. We get on
average 16” of rain a year here, about a quarter of what they get in North
Wales.
Total distance ridden:
26.9 miles
Running: 36 minutes
Thursday, 10 April
I drove to work today.
This is quite an irritating thing to do and means that I become one of those
people who whinges about traffic and parking while doing my best to add to the
problem.
The reason for this is
that in the evening there is the Thursday night time-trial. Normally this would
be a 10 mile race but the first two events are 7.75 miles as we are still a bit
short of daylight.
I had a bit of a blonde
moment and forgot where the start was, it was only when I arrived at the start
line for the 10 mile races and realised that no-one else was there that it
dawned on me that I was in the wrong place and I had to have a bit of a sprint
to get the correct start line on time!
I felt like I rode pretty
well tonight, there was a bit of wind but it never made it a slog. I only
encountered one problem in the race, a car in front of me wanted to turn right
and had come to a standstill waiting for traffic in the other lane to pass. For
some reason he had stopped over to the left side of the lane. The oncoming
lorry meant that I was reluctant to go around the outside of him and so I
braked and headed for the very small gap between him and the kerb hoping to get
passed without taking his wing mirror with me. Slowing from 25mph down to 18mph
costs time, but accelerating back up to speed again costs more, I would guess
that I lost about 10-15 seconds in total. Other than this the race went well
and I was happy with how I rode. There was a decent turnout of 36 riders, I
finished one place lower than last week in 5th but was 18 seconds
faster, despite the slight delay.
On Thursday evenings
there is usually the pub quiz, a rare moment of non-training related activity
for me. The only other thing I do which doesn’t involve riding or running is
tinkering with bikes in the garage.
Total distance ridden:
7.75 miles racing, 4.7 miles warm-up
Friday, 11 April
I could pretty much just
copy and paste Wednesday’s bit in to here, such is the exciting variety of my
life. The running route was a little different, as was the ride home in the evening.
Total distance ridden:
22.3 miles
Running: 34 minutes
Saturday, 12 April
Road riders don’t seem to
do variety. This week was trip to the same café we usually go to on a Saturday
morning. I had decided to try the summer bike again, hopefully without cursing
the weather. Everyone else was out on the posh bikes too and so it was a
reasonably quick ride, the café stop was very welcome. I am sure the waitresses
were delighted to see us lot all piling in, they must miss us when we’re not
there. I topped up with a toasted brie and kiwi baguette (don’t laugh, try it)
and a chocolate roulade with some raspberries and ice-cream, which is usually
enough to keep me going until the end. The others all called it day at about 60
miles again, leaving me to continue the ride alone.
Total distance ridden:
104.2 miles
Sunday, 13 April
An early start for a road
ride in the sunshine. I rode up to Sleaford, just over 12 miles away, to meet
the others. We then headed south east into quite a strong headwind taking turns
at the front. We had a café stop at about 40 miles, a cheese omelette and a
sticky toffee pudding and ice-cream for me. The ride back got a bit
competitive, the tail wind made it pretty quick and the group split up a bit as
the fast guys really put the hammer down. Occasionally road bikes can be fun. I
had about 70 miles on the clock when we got back to Sleaford so I carried on
and did a couple more loops just to bring up the century. It was a lovely warm
sunny day and it would have been a shame not to.
Total distance ridden:
103.3 miles
So that is a week in my
world. Other than the bits where I have to go to work it is good fun. Next
weekend (This weekend – Ed) will be
(was - Ed) the Margam Madness 8hr race which will be held on Saturday 19th. (was held on. You really need to sort your tenses out! - Ed) This is all very exciting, I had a delivery
from Scimitar Sports on Monday so this will be
(was!!!) my first outing in the new XCRacer team kit. My race report will be up on here shortly. (OK, we'll allow you that one in the future tense)
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