It was a good ride – albeit somewhat slower than I expected and for no obvious reason. Just did not have enough energy… I climbed about 2000m, most notably the climb at Whipsandale. Interestingly it always seems that the downhill after a hard climb is not nearly as rewarding as I would have expected (or liked) it to be! It’s too short!!!
Nothing much happened of significance. I was not hurting anywhere in particular and the route was good (more about it later), the weather was good (not too cold – but not too hot either!
The GPS was as always just great. It’s the kind of thing that once you get accustomed to there is great pain in not having it. Tells me my position, tells me my route, tells me my speed, cadence, heart rate – the lot! It can also tell me (took me a while to master that aspect) how much longer do I need to climb to get to the top of the hill. This is SO GOOD when I am puffing and huffing and thinking all sorts of morbid thought as to why am I doing it and gee this is REALLY hard and when the hack this climb will end for pete’s sake and such like. So now I know – and it is really comforting to take the struggle with the unknown out of the equation.
Now the route was good, but it had too many busy sections. Busy as in – far too much traffic and far too fast cars! It’s really quite hard to predict by just looking at the map which road is going to be so busy, and it is also quite deceiving as to how long it takes to cover a busy section. On the map is a mere centimeter, but in reality it’s few Kms, and a real pain. I know how to cycle in traffic, I do it all the time in London, and I am VERY visible (with lights all over and a very bright yellow jacket on at all times) so I overall OK – but still it’s not pleasant. So I went through the route again and tried to minimise those sections to the bare minimum. While at it I also decided to cut out the big climb at Whipsandale and also to remove the ‘shortcut’ which in reality turned out to be a private road which I did not feel I should go through.
On the plus side, though, I somehow managed to map my route through some of the most isolated and rural roads I have been to, with streams crossing my path from time to time and a lot of trees – absolutely lovely. I am hoping to do the nearly identical route this weekend so I can ‘learn’ it a bit more and be less apprehensive as to where and when is my next turn.
I have already prepared a thoroughly researched 300 Km ride but I am really not sure when I am going to do it. It will take me the good part of 20 hours, which means riding in the dark for quite some time at this time of the year. Hmmm… don’t know…
Since I received the Cadence sensor I have been trying to make myself go faster. It is really hard – I am almost constantly on the 53-54 mark on the average. I must get to 60+ to be able to improve my speed. So I am training to do so during my commuting sections and I think I have had a breakthrough – having achieved about 64 both ways! This is very promising and I’ll try to keep it up. For some reason I thought that I need to feel ‘resistance’ when I pedal, otherwise I am just ‘treading water’. This is, of course, nonsense and I can clearly see that pedaling faster at a lower gear makes me go faster than pedaling slower at a high gear. It also feels much less of an effort – although I suspect my heart rate does go higher.
So this weekend I hope to do another 200 Km. I really enjoy it I must say.
The certificate:
