Tour De Force Training, 1st Entry

Short version: I’ve started training… please sponsor me 😛 For more on what is involved look here

Long version… (I can’t work out how to embed iframes in a wordpress site, otherwise they’d be maps and stuff here)

I did my first training ride on the 11th of Jan. A quick 42.18 miles from my front door to a place called Lewknor. Famous for being where the buses between Oxford & London stop for no apparent reason. Mostly I am putting this ride down as a ‘learning experience’ which is code for what not to do… Things I will try and avoid again.

1. Starting after Lunch (to be fair I had an opticians appointment in the morning). But in an English winter this leave you chasing daylight
2. Starting in central ish London. From my house its 10 miles ish to the M25, then another 15 to the other side of maidenhead. Which means 25 miles of traffic & traffic lights before you can really start to enjoy the ride. By which time you’ve been on the bike for 2 hours and are beginning to tire a bit
3. Apples are not real food… well they are but for bike food they come a distant 2nd to cake.

 

The following weekend was a longer, 71.27 miles. Learning my lessons from the previous week. I started earlier, drove to somewhere nice and went armed with cake.

Last weekend (25th, 26th) was Daffer’s mountain biking birthday weekend. So two days of cycling, adding a few hill reps on after finishing the biking to make sure I was good and knackered by the end…

Anyway, training started so far so good. Need more cake.