A monstrous bike ride Sunday. Plan was to meet Rick and Angry in Otley then ride to York and back via the Flatlands in preparation for the Manchester 100 in a couple of weeks. Herb picked me up in Ken the Kamp and we set off, only to grind to a halt just this side of Ilkley as the road was closed due to a fatal accident. We toyed with going round via Blubbs but in the end dumped the car at Addingham and walked across to the Nesfield road and cycled at high speed to Otley (including a ludicrous race with a pensioner on an addax bike).

Off towards York we went, with Rick on yet another new bike and Angry on a posh Spesh thing with a full size chainset he has on test. It's surprisingly lumpy in the first third, but once you're past Wetherby it all gets nice and flat.

We were wazzing along and looking forward to more wazzing on the way home as we were convinced the wind was going to be behind us.




We stopped at Naburn for a brew then set off back to realise the wind was a westerly and we had 35 miles to go straight into it. By the time we were back at Arthington we'd all had a bad spell (except The Herb who was nails) and Angry was off the back and struggling.




Rick managed to get our bikes in his van thing so we avoided another 8 miles of into the wind struggle back to Ken. 74 miles at an average of just under 17mph, but a lesson in how much fitness I've lost as I was shot at the end.

I managed another steady 4 miler after work on Monday without the aid of compression socks, then biked in today the lumpy way on my own. As I was by myself I had time to study the two climbs and realise that whilst they're steep and gnarly they're not that long. The climb through Draughton and past the stables is only about a milke and a half and took 13 minutes, and the dreaded Holden Lane is only 0.6m and took just over 7 minutes. I got absolutely drenched going in so can't wait for the new drying rooms they're building at work.

The ride home was 3 minutes quicker than last week, mainly due to not rabbitting to The Herb (or maybe I'm getting some cycling legs back after 100m last week?).




- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad