Sunday 23 August 2009

Cycling - longest training ride

My training guide said I should be doing a 70-mile ride this weekend. So I decided to cycle back from my parents' house - Bingley (near Bradford, West Yorkshire) to Wincle (near Macclesfield, Cheshire). When I plotted this roughly, it looked like about 55 miles, but I thought the extra hills, relative to a "standard" ride would compensate for any lack of distance.

As you can see from the trace, it was pretty hilly (total ascent 6800 feet). It was also slightly longer than I had thought, at 61 miles. It was also quite windy, and unlike circular bike rides, it was in my face the whole way. I'm still finding my feet in cycling, but I suspect 5 and a quarter hours is not a good time for such a ride. My charity ride is in two weeks and it's 90 miles with 6500 feet of ascent, so I'm confident I've done the right training and any lack of achievement on my part will be due to my team-mates being better than me.
Today's ride was punctuated by Mrs Noel and the kids very kindly meeting me as they were travelling home. This involved much-needed moral support and smarties just when I could see the Holme Moss summit looming. I also had to stop in Buxton to buy some Lucozade as I didn't think I was going to get over Axe Edge without some extra energy.

2 comments:

  1. what do you mean team-mates may be better ?- my race plan was to draft you for most of the race given all your traing ....

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  2. That's fine as long as I can draft Rob.

    ReplyDelete