Back on track

Life’s been running away with me a bit lately. Beth came out of hospital last Monday but was (and still is) pretty poorly. I had planned to work from home all week to be around her, although I did pop into the office for a couple of meetings. This meant I was able to get out at lunch times which I wouldn’t normally be able to do (the sight of a sweaty man in lycra sitting in front of his laptop being acceptable in the privacy of your own home, but not in the office. Sadly. )
So despite my misgivings, I’ve had a good week, which makes up for last week’s bad week.

On Monday I made it to spin and gave it pretty much everything to make up for the lack of weekend riding.

On Tuesday I went round the Beausale loop with Half Mile and Rachel on the fixie. They were both riding new fangled derailleurs. Show offs. Now, although I have ridden this route before, this is the first time I’ve ridden the fixie (anywhere) with someone else. It does present a challenge as you hear the clunk of gears dropping down in anticipation of a forthcoming hill, mentally your brain clicks too. But, its not a hilly route and I held my own. Actually, the hardest part is keeping up on the down hills. With no freewheel, you can only go as fast as your legs will pedal.

Friday I did some weights at the gym and then came the weekend. Half mile joined me for a planned 75km loop to Banbury, Stratford and back. I’ve completed this route in 150 minutes previously, but Paul set off at a pace I struggled to maintain. I did catch him up after 15km or so to complement him on the strength of his riding. But of course it wasn’t to last. At 25km or so, his legs were shot, so he suffered all the way back whilst i got stronger. I think we managed just short of 180 minutes which isn’t too bad.

I followed that up with 50km on Sunday and absolutely flew round the Aston Cantlow loop. So much so I added on a 10km detour through Beausale. And still made spin on Monday.
I also bought a new toy. I now have a Heart Rate monitor to obsess over. When I’ve made sense of the raft of statistics its spits out I might share them.

Finally I signed up for the Cotswold Spring Classic on Easter Monday (http://www.cotswoldspringclassic.co.uk/).

Hmm, perhaps I should’ve looked at the route profile first: