Saturday just had to be a day off the bike – for the simple reason that I’d ridden 5 days on the bounce. Annoyingly it coincided with what was probably the best weather conditions of the week… Seemed a crying shame to waste it, so strapped on my walking boots intending to go for a walk for a hour or so… then I came over all Forrest Gump, and at every point where I could turn back towards home, I sort of carried on. 3 Hours and 8.5 miles later I decided it was a little cold and getting dark, so I really aught to go home and have a brew…
Sunday dawned cold and Icy. So cold that I actually held off setting out for my ride until 10am hoping it’d warm up a bit. If anything, the temperature dropped. As I left the house the Garmin Read 21°c (ambient in the house). For the next mile and a half, the temperature readout dropped like a stone, eventually settling at around -1°c, where it remained for the next hour or so. In order to try and keep on the bike, I decided to ride my usual route in reverse, hoping that the shaded/backroad traffic free bit that is usually the outward leg would have had chance to thaw out a little before I got there. No such luck, everywhere where the road was in shade was still covered in frost. I don’t think I’ve gone so gentle around corners for such a long distance in my life… Probably accounts for the slightly high IF rating of the ride, as I was so slow in the corners I had been pretty much sprinting back out of them to get some semblance of speed back into the ride, and some warmth into my body!. The last 5 miles or so of the ride was probably the easiest, as I picked up the back of a local “clubrun”, was welcomed aboard for a bit of a rest (must have looked rough by then for them to offer) and spent 5 miles dodging the wind and trying to remember not to touch the brakes as I was on something with working disks, and the rest of the lads were riding their winter hacks and rim brakes. Still – it was nice to actually ride in company for a while, and also to realise that I probably could hold my own with that clubrun for the full duration of a ride (the power figures courtesy of the Stages Powermeter for that section are not dissimilar to what I’d done for the rest of the ride, riding solo.
Strava for this ride is here, and if any of the lads from the Calder Clarion who put up with the fat wheelsucker in Black are reading this… thanks for the wheel gents – I was in dire need.
The Shrinking Cyclist 