Since my most enjoyable April run through North Norfolk, I had been wanting to do a similar route again, but with some new roads and some of the not so good bits taken out.
The riding felt very slow compared to the April ride, but I ended up only 0.5mph slower that the last time. This wasn’t actually that bad, considering: there was more climbing on the new route, the wind was much less favourable (stronger crosswind) and a lot of heavy rain in the proceeding days had left muddy roads and big puddles.
In fact, the muddiness was quite spectacular. I hadn’t cleaned the bike for 6 months and it had become slightly dusty. In 1 ride, everything was caked in crud (some of it literal)!
Plumstead church
Despite the weather, I enjoyed the ride and will do the route again.
This was a real surprise. Not only was the bike about 1.5kg lighter, but I also hadn’t been in great shape in February.
Perhaps it was the fact that my friend had gone at a tremendous pace, leaving me shattered by 2/3ds distance, but surely this would make the remaining crawl worse?
Perhaps a cold I had picked up earlier in September had trashed my lungs more than I thought?
Perhaps with the 2 of us and a favourable wind, we had made good time on the flatter bits?
This was to be the last long ride of the year before the mudguards and heavy wheels went back on, so my personal bests would have to wait till next year.
The heat was rather nice to begin with. No trouble warming up. Though I was noticing how little I could push up even small inclines without overheating.
My big worry was the climb up White Down outside Kingsclere, but it wasn’t actually too bad. I ttoke it easy, but still manged to stay in the middle chainring. It was when I stopped at the top to take some photos that stuff started to get crazy.
I don’t think I’ve ever gotten too hot standing around taking a photo, normally the opposite! But, as I stood there trying to take pictures without sweating on the phone, I started to bake because of the lack of wind.
After a couple of hasty shots, I jumped back on the bike and set off down the hill in search of some relief. This is when stuff got crazy. Swooping down the hill at 30+ mph, I was hitting patches of hot air and not cooling down at all. In the end I pulled into a side road with trees for shade and had a chill out.
The section from Overton to Odiham was very slow and depite taking two big bottles of water, I was running out. I ended up popping my head into someones garden and asking if they could re-fill my bottles. Thankfully, they were very freindly and even gave me a glass of cold water to be going on with. Thank you denizen of North Waltham!
Water situation secure, the rest of the ride was not spectacular, feeling slow, tired and hot. Jumped in the paddling pool when I got home.
Because I’d done no long rides in Jun, I thought I’d get in 2 in July to make up for it. A family trip to Bristol set me up for some different scenery and I re-used a ride I’d done in 2013 taking in some beasts of the Cotswolds: https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/9179065533
Unfortunately, I hadn’t gotten over a chest infection from the previous week, but thought I’d give the ride a go anyway.
The ride consisted of a flat leg out to the North, unfortunately into a headwind, followed by big hills back towards Bristol. I didn’t push it too hard on the A38 because I knew what was coming and had plenty of opportunity to stop on the Severn Levels for photos.
The first big hill, Haresfield Beacon, truly was a beast! Starting steep and getting steeper, ramping up to 25% with terrible surface near the top. Alarmingly, a mountain biker passed me on the steepest section as I gave it everything, gasping for air. It was then I heard his electric motor!
The second big hill, Frocester, I actually quite enjoyed as the gradient never got above 10% and the surface was good. The only problem was that I thought my rear tyre was going soft. This turned out not to be the case and I managed to pass a couple on a tandem.
From there, it was a pretty flat run to home. I couldn’t make much speed though, so ended up much slower than my previous few 100s. Not the end of the world though, considering how rough I had felt that morning.
I had failed to do a 100k+ ride in June due to family holidays and kids activities. To kick off July, I thought I’d pull out a tried and tested loop to Alresford: https://connect.garmin.com/modern/activity/9135571858
Doing a route I knew well, I managed to blast round at a speed I’d now associate with the flat(ish) lands of Norfolk. Approaching Fresham pond I switched from map view to speed view on my cycle computer and saw it was 30kph! Unfortunately there was a climb between me and home and I couldn’t quite hang on.
The first half of the route is pretty flat, though I felt I was fighting a slight headwind as I tried to keep the speed up while I could.
The nice thing about this ride, is that the toughest hill is the first real challenge you encounter. This is White Hill, leading out of Kinsgclere. I felt like I went up it pretty quickly, though I was a little slower than this time last year, even with my lightweight setup. Whatever the speed, the views are always good on a sunny day.
Surprisingly for mid morning on a sunny Saturday the roads were very quiet and the rolling road to Overton was a treat.
From here on the hills came thick and fast. Nothing particularly steep or long, but one after another. This one from near Abbotstone Down.
With the pacing I used this ride, I think I found a perfect balance where everything hurt at the same time! There was a point nearing Golden Pot (about 10 miles from home) where my legs hurt (understandable), my back hurt (something that seems to be happening more), my feet hurt, my hands were abit numb and I had a headache! To be fair I’d had the headache since I woke up, so probably nothing to do with the bike ride, but it didn’t help.
My lower back pain seems to be something of a combination of pushing hard and staying low on the bars. Unfortunately, sitting up generally means I have to pedal harder. The one good thing was that having to stand for a climb seemed to ease the pain somewhat, so the climb up to Well was actually welcome, though as hard as ever.
So all in all, really hard, but enjoyable in a Type 2 kind of way.
I quite often used to cycle from Adershot to Norwich, but that ride takes out a whole day, so I though I’d experiment with doing the Norfolk leg of the journey wile fresh. This was somewhat inspired by my friend doing L’Etape who dropped off his family (or is that the other way round) on a trip to the in-laws.
The route had almost no hills (about 1/5 of the climb I’d expect near to home), which made it very different in terms of effort, especially with abit of a headwind. Normally you can rest a little on downhills, but on this ride, there were none, so the pedalling was continuous.
I decided to go fast from the off and see how it worked out, rather than saving myself and feeling I hadn’t given it everything. Therefore on the first leg to Prickwillow, I managed to average over 20mph into the wind!
It was then across the Ouse and into deep Fen country.
Through this whole section, until deep into Thetford Forrest, there were a great number of bugs trying to get me and I had to be careful with my breathing. I think something even stung my tongue!
Through the fens and forest, I saw about 10 cars, but that changed once I hit the B1108 through Watton. The turn off I’d engineered before Hingham was a relief, however, it did put me onto slow roads and my average speed kept dropping.
The photo opportunities were better than the B-road though.
It was then back onto the B1108 and the last dash to Norwich.
This is the first 100k ride I’ve done where I’ve not come out of the big chainring. That did mean I had to push hard up the last climb, probably the steepest of the ride past the UEA.
After slogging through Welsh mountains, I was looking forward to some flatter terrain, so I planned a trip through North Norfolk on the Easter weekend.
This must actually go down as one of the most enjoyable rides I’ve done. I flew from Norwich to the coast down sunny, deserted lanes and averaged over 31kph! There was a little more traffic in Sheringham, but this petered out as I headed up the hill to Kelling Heath, which was shorter and easier than I thought it would be.
It transpired at this point (not unsurprisingly) that my race to the sea had been a little wind assisted and the rest of the ride was something of a battle into a headwind trying not to keep my average speed from being eaten away too much. The quiet lanes and scenery eased the task.
The only bits that weren’t quite as good were the short TT bash down the A1067 where there was an unnecessary close pass (the other side of the road being empty) and the run in to Earlham, but that was so close to the end it didn’t matter.
So in the end I achieved by far the fastest 100k I’ve ever done. I’m not sure why this sudden turn of speed. Perhaps switching to a smaller, lighter saddlebag, putting on “summer” tyres and removing the TT bars all at the same time. I’m still not sure of this as the weight saving is about 1kg tops.
My friend doing the L’Etape had been mooting a weekend away somewhere more hilly. Initially, we had thought about Snake Pass, that was closed to motor traffic at the time. However, it was then closed to cyclists due to “health and safety” (like a small landslip is more dangerous than A-road traffic), so I got thinking about South Wales, which was nearer than the Peak District anyway.
I found an interesting route in the area in my “Great British Bike Rides” book and re-worked it to be slightly shorter, but taking in Gospel Pass.
The first climb was The Tumble and I was disappointed at how quickly I ended up in the lowest gear. I was convinced I could do this one using the middle chainring given it was mainly less than 15%. My friend of course disappeared off up the road, but we stopped at the top for a photo opp.
The ride across the plateau to Brynmawr was surprisingly busy but the descent down the B4560 was excellent, even though I ended up being held up by a Land Rover.
The transition to Hay on Wye was rolling and my friend took it at speed and I had to push hard despite being on his wheel.
Ice creams at Hay on Wye were most welcome. Honeycomb and Pistachio as I recall.
The road up Gospel Pass was a physical challenge, but also chock with traffic. We stopped once on the steepest section to let people past from behind. We also both encountered a maxed out Land Rover (with fat knobbly tyres and snorkel) coming the other way, that wouldn’t move and inch onto the grass (not a problem for many others).
Yet again I lagged behind massively, but at least I was expecting this one to be a bottom gear grind.
I had really been looking forward to the descent to make up some time, but the surface was horrible.
The transition back to Monmouth took in some big hills (probably the feature climbs of the ride in many other places). None were too steep and could have been very enjoyable had my physical condition not collapsed. Any time I tried to push my calf would cramp up. So I was forced to granny ring up 5% inclines.
I even tried to push through it close to Monmouth, but the calf cramped up completely and I had to stop for a minute!
Beers in Monmouth after the ride felt well earned.
My friend had devised a route taking in more climbs, but it included one dead end one that I knew I’d get annoyed by, so I did some tweaking to make more of a loop.
It started out close to zero, with frost on the side of the road, but we were soon pretty warm in the sunshine. My Stolen Goat gillet got it’s first real use. The climb over Beacon Hill went well and the difficult looking climb up from East Harting wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d feared. Views from the top were great.
My friend has been doing alot more training than me over the winter and is considerably fitter, but I thought I kept up well until about 2/3rds distance where I started getting calf cramps and going slowly.
CyclingCoder 