It was Wednesday when I came up with the route for the club ride for Saturday; not of itself remarkable except that I hadn't been out with the club (PacTri) for over a month having not been well. The forecast for Saturday as seen from Thursday wasn't great; on Friday it was awful. I took the plunge, it's not a thing one does, but I announced that I wasn't going on the Saturday ride even though I'd planned it. Tush!
About an hour later the phone rang. Suzy. The weather in Gloucestershire won't be as bad as the weather in Somerset says she. Let's go and ride the Jack and Grace audax route. I wasn't hard to convince, I wanted to get out. I'd hardly ridden for six weeks.
As planned - meet for a 9am start from Aztec West (North West Bristol). Three of us there; Suzy, Dave and myself. The initial mile or so will never count as wonderful; it's just escaping Bristol. Then there's the swooping downhill of Fernhill and I was flying. Flying with what felt like a wobbly wheel. Puncture? No. Don't know. Perhaps just the effect of sidewind but that doesn't seem right. I stopped,investigated, found nothing and continued. That was the last of it for the day -perhaps just mud stuck on a wheel.
The northbound section of the Jack and Grace Cotton Memorial audax route comes with a suitable supply of short, steepish small hills...
...exactly the sort of thing that simulated short efforts on a turbo will help with. I've been on the turbo twice a week of late. Zoom. They have an interesting range of catapults at a couple of the chateaux of the Dordogne valley; I don't think I'd have gone up those banks much quicker if I'd been sent from one. Wind assistance - that is what we shall call it. We knew we were getting considerable wind assistance; there was a fairly strong wind from the south. We knew it would be harder on the way back - we were right. In spades! More later. For the moment we were simply enjoying the tail wind. No hands worked well, just sit up (keep pedalling) and use the wind on my back to help blow me along. I may have only been half way up the strava segment times for that section; but this was basically wind power - some effort from me, but not a lot (for anyone not familiar with Strava - how? - the segment is the purple bit on the map).
At Longney (where the purple bit stops) the majority of folk stopped for a coffee and to get their audax cards signed. Now this is where the confession comes in; we were riding the route but not as official audax riders. Bad! We'd been too late to enter on line, entries were closed as the event was full. I had tried to pay at the desk in the morning but there was no facility to pay by card and I had no cash. Possibly that's a bit like Ford offering to pay by American Express (only those old enough to remember Hitch Hiker's Guide have any chance with that one). We were willing to pay for coffee but Suzy's exploration of the queue said that going on was a better idea, So we did.
A little more northerly cruising was followed by 'the turn', two 90ish degree corners and we were pedalling south into the full force of that not so gentle breeze that had pushed us north. Suddenly it was hard work. The advent of rain was not welcome. There was a point where we had to stop at traffic lights on a junction with road works for a while, quite a peloton built waiting for the lights to change of which I was sat at the back. Starting off a fellow rider and I had an agreement of line, which is to say we both tried to occupy the same bit of road. I pulled out of the impending collision; I'm not sure he'd even know there had been one, and was thereby dropped by about 5m off the back of the group. I knew it would be hard to bridge it back. The group had strong riders at the front and the rest had wind protection. It took me most of half a kilometre to be back in the bunch with my heart rate monitor reading well into threshold numbers. Still, only about 30 miles of into the wind to do!
Stonehouse has a cafe - oh blessed Stonehouse.
I was in some need of that coffee - and a pastie. They didn't have a pastie. They did have some panini things. The young lad that brought it to me warned me it might be hot so I treated it with due caution. Many thanks for the warning; a snippet and I put it down, waited the equivalent of a period before the next reduction in rail prices and tried again. Pleasant - and so necessary. Then there was the little matter of re-packing. The bit you don't know is that Dave had need of tools early in the ride to adjust his front mechanism. Not an issue, he'd plenty, I'd more. My mini-saddle bag didn't want to do up after getting them out though; it's been on the way out for a while. Removing the cash for the cafe from it, or rather trying to do it up after having done so, proved it's death knell. The anchoring strap tore through and the zip evaporated. No - really, a vapour is made of lots of tiny particles of liquid acting like a gas. The bag was so wet the tiny bits that it dropped into had no problems imitating a liquid and their free distribution was gas like. Anyway, it was dead. the contents would have to go into the pockets of my tops. They did but my trusty 'bag mudguard' is no more, all road crud could now spray straight up my back. Yurgh. Helpful young man (he of the 'hot warning') happily let me put the remains of the bag into their bin. Brave.
After the cafe it somehow all seemed easier. It helped that there seemed to be a suitable supply of wheels to jump on and groups to work between. Granted the section where I sat on Suzy's wheel through the muckiest of lanes gave me a horrid taste in the mouth; mud and worse for sure, but the miles ticked down and I seemed to get stronger. To be leading groups back together, moving from one to the next, sitting in for a while, moving to the front and pulling that group up to the next kept me amused for the best part of 10 miles; as well as surprising me considerably that I could do it after several weeks out ill before this one. Dave decided he'd take the easy flat way home, as he said - doing 65 miles when you're used to 45 is a considerable undertaking so that it was hardly surprising he started to get dropped on the uphill sections. He'd done his share earlier though having put in a considerable shift on the front for those hard miles to the cafe.
None of the cars or tired cyclists in Bristol actually killed me. One cyclist had a really good go, forcing me across the road as he assumed I would be going into the final audax checkpoint and came out of it straight across the front of me. I forgive him readily - we should have paid and therefore been going in to get our cards stamped not to mention that we'd all been fighting the wind for 30 miles or more. Let's hear it for long rides in January. I haven't heard yet what the ride was like for those that went out to do the route I'd originally planned. My bail out rest day will only take two or three to recover from.
About an hour later the phone rang. Suzy. The weather in Gloucestershire won't be as bad as the weather in Somerset says she. Let's go and ride the Jack and Grace audax route. I wasn't hard to convince, I wanted to get out. I'd hardly ridden for six weeks.
As planned - meet for a 9am start from Aztec West (North West Bristol). Three of us there; Suzy, Dave and myself. The initial mile or so will never count as wonderful; it's just escaping Bristol. Then there's the swooping downhill of Fernhill and I was flying. Flying with what felt like a wobbly wheel. Puncture? No. Don't know. Perhaps just the effect of sidewind but that doesn't seem right. I stopped,investigated, found nothing and continued. That was the last of it for the day -perhaps just mud stuck on a wheel.
The northbound section of the Jack and Grace Cotton Memorial audax route comes with a suitable supply of short, steepish small hills...
...exactly the sort of thing that simulated short efforts on a turbo will help with. I've been on the turbo twice a week of late. Zoom. They have an interesting range of catapults at a couple of the chateaux of the Dordogne valley; I don't think I'd have gone up those banks much quicker if I'd been sent from one. Wind assistance - that is what we shall call it. We knew we were getting considerable wind assistance; there was a fairly strong wind from the south. We knew it would be harder on the way back - we were right. In spades! More later. For the moment we were simply enjoying the tail wind. No hands worked well, just sit up (keep pedalling) and use the wind on my back to help blow me along. I may have only been half way up the strava segment times for that section; but this was basically wind power - some effort from me, but not a lot (for anyone not familiar with Strava - how? - the segment is the purple bit on the map).
At Longney (where the purple bit stops) the majority of folk stopped for a coffee and to get their audax cards signed. Now this is where the confession comes in; we were riding the route but not as official audax riders. Bad! We'd been too late to enter on line, entries were closed as the event was full. I had tried to pay at the desk in the morning but there was no facility to pay by card and I had no cash. Possibly that's a bit like Ford offering to pay by American Express (only those old enough to remember Hitch Hiker's Guide have any chance with that one). We were willing to pay for coffee but Suzy's exploration of the queue said that going on was a better idea, So we did.
A little more northerly cruising was followed by 'the turn', two 90ish degree corners and we were pedalling south into the full force of that not so gentle breeze that had pushed us north. Suddenly it was hard work. The advent of rain was not welcome. There was a point where we had to stop at traffic lights on a junction with road works for a while, quite a peloton built waiting for the lights to change of which I was sat at the back. Starting off a fellow rider and I had an agreement of line, which is to say we both tried to occupy the same bit of road. I pulled out of the impending collision; I'm not sure he'd even know there had been one, and was thereby dropped by about 5m off the back of the group. I knew it would be hard to bridge it back. The group had strong riders at the front and the rest had wind protection. It took me most of half a kilometre to be back in the bunch with my heart rate monitor reading well into threshold numbers. Still, only about 30 miles of into the wind to do!
Stonehouse has a cafe - oh blessed Stonehouse.
I was in some need of that coffee - and a pastie. They didn't have a pastie. They did have some panini things. The young lad that brought it to me warned me it might be hot so I treated it with due caution. Many thanks for the warning; a snippet and I put it down, waited the equivalent of a period before the next reduction in rail prices and tried again. Pleasant - and so necessary. Then there was the little matter of re-packing. The bit you don't know is that Dave had need of tools early in the ride to adjust his front mechanism. Not an issue, he'd plenty, I'd more. My mini-saddle bag didn't want to do up after getting them out though; it's been on the way out for a while. Removing the cash for the cafe from it, or rather trying to do it up after having done so, proved it's death knell. The anchoring strap tore through and the zip evaporated. No - really, a vapour is made of lots of tiny particles of liquid acting like a gas. The bag was so wet the tiny bits that it dropped into had no problems imitating a liquid and their free distribution was gas like. Anyway, it was dead. the contents would have to go into the pockets of my tops. They did but my trusty 'bag mudguard' is no more, all road crud could now spray straight up my back. Yurgh. Helpful young man (he of the 'hot warning') happily let me put the remains of the bag into their bin. Brave.
After the cafe it somehow all seemed easier. It helped that there seemed to be a suitable supply of wheels to jump on and groups to work between. Granted the section where I sat on Suzy's wheel through the muckiest of lanes gave me a horrid taste in the mouth; mud and worse for sure, but the miles ticked down and I seemed to get stronger. To be leading groups back together, moving from one to the next, sitting in for a while, moving to the front and pulling that group up to the next kept me amused for the best part of 10 miles; as well as surprising me considerably that I could do it after several weeks out ill before this one. Dave decided he'd take the easy flat way home, as he said - doing 65 miles when you're used to 45 is a considerable undertaking so that it was hardly surprising he started to get dropped on the uphill sections. He'd done his share earlier though having put in a considerable shift on the front for those hard miles to the cafe.
None of the cars or tired cyclists in Bristol actually killed me. One cyclist had a really good go, forcing me across the road as he assumed I would be going into the final audax checkpoint and came out of it straight across the front of me. I forgive him readily - we should have paid and therefore been going in to get our cards stamped not to mention that we'd all been fighting the wind for 30 miles or more. Let's hear it for long rides in January. I haven't heard yet what the ride was like for those that went out to do the route I'd originally planned. My bail out rest day will only take two or three to recover from.
