The story of a very ordinary cyclists’ self imposed challenge to complete a 100 mile bike ride around each and every one of the 92 historical counties of the UK. This blog aims to support the amazing work of the Midlands Air Ambulance and with a bit of luck will provide an interesting and amusing insight into all that goes right and wrong on two wheels across our varied and beautiful Isles.
The change in the weather from wet and dreary to perishingly cold thankfully coincided with a recovery week. Roads thick with ice at 5:30 am are not something I’m willing to risk regardless of how determined I am to meet a challenge, so I took full advantage of my Spoked training plan advising reduced training intensity and volume and avoided riding whilst the weather charts turned blue with -4 degrees the norm for a few days. Had an arctic blast coincided with a build block of training, I may just have to have dragged out the turbo trainer, dusted off two years worth of cobwebs and stupefied my brain and buttocks with hours of pedalling going nowhere.
Park life
A ride-free week with the only exertion dog walking and cycling focussed stretching, mobility and strength exercises courtesy of Dynamic Cyclist saw me desperately hoping for a thaw to enable a safe, long ride on Saturday. Unfortunately, my hopes were dashed with the temperature stubbornly refusing to climb above -4 degrees. Plan B was a hair-raising one-kilometre ride cum skate to the local park where I had an absolute blast on my cross bike bouncing over the crisp parkland, crunching through frozen puddles and flying round areas normally ankle-deep in mud at this time of the year. With barely a cloud in the sky and not a soul to be seen I had a great high intensity hour in my own personal winter wonderland.
Week 5 – Back on it
With recovery week over and only the tiniest increase in temperature the two early evening rides in midweek were decidedly tentative affairs constantly on alert for the sparkle of ice as my headlight beam danced across the tarmac in front of me or the change in tone as my cyclocross tyres bit into any lurking frost patches.
As the week drew to a close the roads finally thawed and confidence in staying upright returned.
Saturday’s 90km easy-paced ride in North Warwickshire, punctuated with a block of six 30-second sprints around the halfway point, was an upbeat affair for the most part, it was still cold, but the air was still, the roads quiet, and in contrast to all my other rides of the week it was, barring the first fifteen minutes in daylight! It was good to coax my mate Rock out for the last hour, hopefully the first step towards riding another of my 92 counties with me in the summer.
Saturday’s ride wasn’t all good mind, coming down the hill into Meriden I felt something flick into my cheek and suddenly only one eye was seeing clearly! Disappointingly the right lens of my prescription Rudy Project Fotonyk sunglasses had broke free again just as the previous pair did in the summer. As I glanced back a heavy haulage truck, presumably carrying aggregate for HS2 construction obliterated the lens under it’s huge wheels as it thundered past me!
The Spoked training app gives you the option to select not only how long you wish to ride each day, with recommended weekly totals to meet your goal, but it also allows you to choose a “free ride” of your own selected intensity or a “planned ride” where the intervals and intensity are created for you by the Spoked algorithm to meet the desired training intensity for the week. With a firm goal ahead of me, the balance of my typical training week has shifted much more towards the planned rides. This weekend was no different, with Spoked serving up a long steady ride on Saturday with six short full-out sprints and Sunday’s ride shorter but more intense with a series of 9-minute tempo efforts followed by 2-minute threshold efforts. The intervals are easily uploaded pre-ride as a Garmin workout. So far, I’ve enjoyed the sessions immensely as they’ve not only added more purpose to my rides but as most of my rides at the moment are done solo in the pitch dark, they’ve also added a bit of extra interest.
With my Proviz reflective over shoes falling apart at the toes, I treated myself to a new pair of GripGrab Race thermo X MTB and CX-specific winter overshoes, which on first impression, seemed very robust and were definitely toasty. They are however a bit of a faff to get on with the thick neoprene a test of your finger’s strength. The gaiters I bought to go with them are supposed to improve waterproofing, I’m sure it won’t be long before I find out, but one thing’s for sure a fashion statement they’re not!
Too Many Reasons To Live
I continue to listen to Rob Burrows’s book too many reasons to live for a few minutes each night before going to sleep, and what an excellent, thought-provoking and, at times, funny listen to it is. I recommend anybody to read or listen to it. Not only is his courage and humility genuinely breathtaking, but the lighter moments and tales from his Rugby League career have been enthralling and uplifting. To hear this former elite sportsman describe how he challenges himself each day to complete simple tasks like tieing his shoelaces and celebrates accomplishing this as he would have done when scoring a match-winning try is a sobering but inspiring insight into how he has met MND head on and refuses to just give in to its ravages.
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