So lads and lasses, gone was the MTB and in comes the new Road bike. Pictures later. At 9.4kg it’s 3 times lighter then my MTB and “made for speed, but with the big miles in mind”. It also came with a nice bell.
After some fiddling with the pedals I was ready to roll last weekend..here goes the tale.
Friday 30th
Distance covered: 6 miles
Theme: Rain
One word: disaster
Man did it rain, I was literally riding with shoes fall of water (coming in from underneath and above!). I can take being wet I have learnt, but not having water move forwards and backwards in your shoes on every pedal, no sir. So I came home, and put that one down to experience. I also bought myself some Seal Skinz (waterproof socks!) for a tenner on eBay! I’m going to do the bath test when they come, how exciting.
Saturday 31st
Distance covered: 33 miles
Theme: hills in the peaks
One word: gears
This was my usual route, done it about 5 times on the MTB, a nice round loop from my house to Kettleshulme and back around the bottom of Buxton. 10 miles in I’m sailing along until I drop down the gears on a climb and find the lever won’t budge. I’m in the lowest of the low already, but it’s still too tough to ride with any level of comfort. I crack on and get off the saddle, and as no one is around I get on with the old groans and do it. I carry on with this process one more time but only with the goal that I can stop when I get to the top and regain myself. 10 minutes later, I’m off again but with the 3rd and 4th such silly climb I had to walk. To add salt to the wounds, my brilliantly scary steep descent was stopped while sheep chattered on the road. A character building day, but we'll get there!
Sunday 1st
Distance covered: 49 miles
Theme: a new, flatter, route
One word: lies
I wanted a few more (flatter) miles today so I took the advice of using other peoples cycling routes in my local area, using Bikely.com I found a 50 miler and 1/10 difficulty level – brilliant, I’m riding on a snooker table let’s get some speed on! Now, either that route was submitted by “C.Boardman” or 1/10 is the default and they didn’t see it (I refuse to believe it was a normal person and I’m crap), I mean it was at least a 3 or 4! A few more hills, nothing as bad as the peaks mind, and I was done in 3 hours or so. Not bad, hey.
Monday
Distance covered: 0.2 miles, to the doctors
Theme: anti inflammatory tablets
One word: pace it you tool (sorry I needed 4)
So with the excitement of the new bike comes the reality that my bike DOES have enough gears to do LEJOG (as I’ve been advised several times) however clearly I DON’T! Perhaps that advice doesn’t work for the 3 month old cycler as I imagine it’s like fishing with a great big rod when you’ve only just mastered using a net, maybe not quite like that.. but you get my drift.
So with some tablets and 5 to 10 days of advised rest I plan to “rest up well” until next Friday, and then have another crack at the flat 50 miler….maybe followed by the peaks on Sunday where I will refuse to walk up any hill... With practice we will get there.
Cycling, hey!
Daz x
Important PS blog readers:
http://www.justgiving.com/alfies-team
Spread the word, momentum is growing..! Its now just 48 days till we start on Monday Sept 20th!!
Next week we will have our official 12 day route published - so supporters/cyclers if we are coming to a town near you, you can join us for as long as you can stand it!
FINALLY, if anyone has any connections with Coventry, Liverpool or Middlesbrough based companies please let me know. Why, we need local sponsorship and locations close to the 3 Zoe's Place Hospices would work best. It costs £500/person to fund the two weeks, and so far we've got that down to £300 through some cracking sponsorship deals, so with one last push i'd like to think £200 is achievable.
Over and out.
