With about 4 weeks to
go until London 2 Paris, I have been spending more time cycling over the last
few weeks.
In total I managed to
get out on the bike for about 10.5 hours over the last 7 days, covering just
over 155 miles in 5 rides, two of which were 10 mile commutes to work. For
those who have cycled on the south coast this week, it felt like at least 99%
of the miles were against a headwind!
When heading out, I tend to have a
general idea of where I plan to ride, but don’t really give it too much
thought. This tactic slightly came back to bite me in the arse this week as in
my attempts to avoid the main roads, I took a turning and surprisingly ended up
in the middle of Uckfield high street!
Needless to say, I
have no clear idea how I ended up there or which direction to head home. In the
end I found a sign post with the options of London or Lewes and wisely opted to
head back to Lewes.
During this particular
ride, I became slightly confused over cycling etiquette when a couple of riders
from Brighton caught me on a flat section with a particularly strong headwind.
Im not too fussed normally
when caught and overtaken by other riders (especially when there are two of
them working together) but in this instance they said hello and then pulled in
about a wheel length directly in front of me. I didn’t think too much of it,
and was fully expecting them to pull away within a few hundred meters. But this
never happened, I can only guess that the headwind had caught them out and
despite them taking regular turns on the front they remained only a couple of
wheel lengths ahead of me.
Needless to say, I was
happy to take a breather in the slipstream from what felt like a hurricane, but
after a while I wanted to keep the pace up and keep working rather than
freewheel thus letting them pull away, so I began to (mentally) question if I
maybe should offer to take a pull?
This is where I became
confused; would they like this suggestion? Or would they think it was a bit of
a piss take? Kind of, ‘Oh hi, thanks for overtaking me but you’re a little slow
shall we speed up a bit?’ Im not sure this would have gone down too well. To
make matters worse, the number of miles of them and me staying in touch were slowly
clocking up, and I thought that it had probably gone past the point that it was
acceptable for me to offer.
This dilemma started
to make my brain hurt, and so shortly turned off and headed in a different
direction (towards Uckfield apparently)
But still I wonder,
should I have offered to take a pull?!
Contrary to the rest
of the week (and BBC forecast), the sun greeted me when I pulled back the
curtains this morning, and I put the bike in the car and met some friends to
conquer some Sussex roads. I was tasked with route planning and decided that I
would include a few hills, including ‘High and Over’ in the South Downs.
Local riders may have
ridden this route and know a little of its gradient and length. Turns out my
fellow riders didn’t. Just prior to the climb there is a little dip and just at
the moment the dip turned upwards, a fellow (younger) rider shot past me out of
the saddle, with the question ‘Where are your rainbow striped socks today?’
Unprovoked, I
continued to spin on the peddles and 20-30m further up the climb, caught,
passed and dropped the rider, just taking the time to remark that I had brought
my King of the Mountain ones today and Il see him at the top. Job Done.
In other news, I decided
to balance the cycling with more swimming and with the absence of a club master’s
session (due to the bank holiday) visited the pool twice to work on a few
drills suggested by Swim smooth program. These drills generally involve me
drinking vast quantities of the local pool and being overtaken by pretty much
everyone else. The weekly time trial was cancelled due to roadworks, so my
wooden spoon record remains unblemished.
In contrast, the
yearly hockey AGM was held on Friday, where I collected 2XI Player of the
Season, for the second year in a row. Rock on!
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