Chippy in pain

Sunday 26th I planned a big ride. Peaches, Ed, Half Mile and Mark were all up for tagging along for the hard route to Chipping Campden and the easy route back



Before we set off Ed cried off with a sore back, from falling on the ice at the local rink whilst trying to impress the girls and Mark cried off with a chest cold, leaving the three of us. Half Mile led the way, but at the top of Loxley hill (about 15km in) he declared himself wiped out and headed home (to be fair he only got back from NYC on Thursday) leaving two of us.

Peaches and I headed on to Ilmington and the big climb over to Chipping Campden. Although I led the way up the climb at its steepest point I did glance down at the speedo which was reading a remarkable 1.3kph. Remarkable only in that I stayed vertical! We stopped in Chippy and had a snack and recovered some strength before heading on out over Dover’s Hill, another climb much more difficult than I remembered it. The descent down the other side is the scariest I have ridden. 14% and about a mile long, I hit 63kph with the brakes full on (and I mean full on), having watched Lance Armstrong in the middle of the peloton, descending at 103kph puts it all in perspective. Those guys have balls of steel. Incidentally, 63kph is the same speed that Jack Bobridge sprinted off the front of the peloton at on day 4 of the Tour Down Under. How do they do that? I mean even accounting for the lighter/better bike, fitness and technique, that’s a remarkable speed from a standing start. And to keep it up for 148km is jaw dropping.

In total I managed just over 90km on Sunday, in just over 4 hours (actually 3:17 cycling plus breaks). These guys did the same distance in 1 hr 42 minutes, although admittedly on a flat course http://www.tourdownunder.com.au/2009/?q=node/266. Anyway, about 70km in Peaches was getting increasingly weary and told me to carry on. So I left on my own. Stupidly, I thought I’d time trial my way home, burnt all my energy in the next 10k and was grateful to tag on the wheel of some bloke on a top of the range Trek just outside Warwick. But he was fresh and having made the effort to catch him I couldn’t keep up, so I was glad to see him turn off ahead of me. He wasn’t very friendly and generally I find that with roadies, they don’t care for other riders. By contrast mountain bikers are the opposite (I’m sure there are exceptions) and always seem willing to stop and chat and compare scrapes and crashes.
By the time I got home I was wiped out, so I skipped spin today and drove to work. Guilty but my legs ache. Peaches dropped in for coffee when he got home and I did reflect that in terms of his training for L2P he is way ahead of where I was at the same stage 2 years ago when I started training for the end to end. It took me 4 months to ride my first 100km. But I do need to find my legs by June. There’s no way I could ride 500km in 4 days the way I feel at the moment. I’m hoping its just because I overdid it at the gym last week, but I have had a wake up call.