New Years Day was a clear day and as i had only managed one ride over Christmas i felt the need to get out on my Cyclocross.
The one ride i had managed over Christmas was to track a route for someone writing a book on cycle rides in southeast, i have a few routes to try out but for my first i thought i would do the shortest and easiest, easiest because i knew most of the route, so navigation would be simpler.
The plan was to follow the GPS and at every junction or as passing any notable feature i would take a picture and write notes to then submit.
The route was only 15 miles so i thought i would cycle to the start which would cover some of the latter part of the route and then start recording, thinking as its only a 15 mile loop a couple of hours should be more than sufficient, alas this was not the case and i had to abandon half way through to get home for some family time.
The second half was then what i completed on the 1st of Jan, my first ride of 2013
I can't give any details of the ride as it's a secret, however i can tell you that cyclocross tyres (continental speed king) were required and i tracked a total of 30.1Km
2nd of Jan as for a lot of people was the dreaded first day back at work, Grrrrr, to ease myself into continuing my training plan and to break up my first working day back i thought i would go for a lunch time ride, another reason for this was an impending audax and the need to test some new tyres...... Just before Christmas, after falling off on the roads, i purchased a pair of Continental Top Contact Winter 2 tyres, these are the dog's doo daa's for winter riding apparently, good for up to 4 inches of snow and grippy even on Ice! so to learn from my previous accident, these were to be fitted for winter road riding. i have a route that i can do in about an hour from work which covers about 15 miles of beautiful Hampshire countryside, quiet roads, a real treat in the summer in particular, alas in the winter most of the roads are covered in mud and rubbish as they are predominantly used by farmers. 25.1Km nailed on a cool sunny winters day, nice
This left me with 15K to go for my week one target of 70K, at this point i should say that in my head my training mileage should be done in the week and is different to "event" mileage, my buddy Tim sees it differently and he is of course right but that's me, suffice to say this is where the "training" miles stopped......next ride was on the 5th "Mr Pickwicks January Sale" 200K audax.
In Tim's world this exceeded training mileage, but in my head i had fallen short of my 70K target by 15K.
"Mr Pickwick's January Sale" was a Black Sheep event organised by Mark Rigby, the majority of audax's i have completed so far have been Black Sheep events, primarily cos they are my mate Tim's favourite events and the start is always the same and not too far from his abode,
The ride went well overall, nicely spaced out controls, every 50 ish k's the only pain of the day was forgetting to pump up my new tyres to proper pressure, 85psi, instead i rode the first 100K on about 55psi, at the 2nd control i managed to get them up to about 70psi which made a huge different but it had taken it's toll on me as it had been like riding up hill from the start, you can read a more in depth precis of the day HERE total k'age for this ride was 201K
Made a little cycle related purchase this week, "TREK Bicycle clock" I had seen one of these on the handlebars of Rob Dean on the Bear Bones 200, since then i had been trying to find the same device, found one on eBay before Christmas and made the purchase, this week i bought another, instead of the £15 RRP i get em for a fiver cos you can't get em in the shops anymore and no-one else makes anything similar.
It's a great little device, particularly for audaxing, defo recommend.
Target for the week 70K
Total distance achieved 256K
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