Flies and Bikes Blog

The omens weren't good for this event. In early December I came down with a long-lasting cold that kept me from training for much of the month.  This, coupled with festive season food consumption, resulted in my carrying several kilos over my racing weight.  So it was with some trepidation that I set off for the club room to ride the New Year's day '10'.  The event was held on the F5d/10 Stoke Hammond bypass course.

As usual, I rode down to the club room, where we were meeting and signing on.  Fortunately, the weather was warmer than of late, and was just slightly over freezing. Less fortunately, it was kind of a damp, penetrating cold, that had us all shivering on the line. To add insult to injury, there was a gentle amount of tiny, almost imperceptible, snowflakes. Just before I was due to start, I decided against removing my outer thermal layers. This was all to the good, I think. I had a quick spin up and down the opening leg of the course, which was enough to confirm that was the correct clothing choice.  In all, we had a good turnout for this event - 13 riders.

At the appointed moment, off I went, assisted up the opening leg by the gentle east breeze.  It really was bitterly cold, however, and it was really quite difficult to get the effort out of my legs! In any event, I made  it round the course, albeit in a depressingly slow time of 25:22.

You can see from the HRM trace above that at least (a) I tried hard, and (b) it was a strong level 3 session! (The black line is heart rate, blue is speed and green is altitude).