Cycling #2

After a change in plans for the celebration of our first wedding anniversary, we have been at home carrying out an impromptu triathlon camp.  I guess the prospect of the Olympic women's triathlon on Saturday is quite motivating!   It had been 10 days since I'd been on the road bike so I was keen to go out again and see if I could push it a little harder and a little further.   It turned out I could.

We cycled to Aston, a pretty village in the Cotswolds, which my GPS tells me is 23.59 km from our house.  It took about 1h 20 minutes to get there, there was a strong headwind and I was still reminding myself of how the road bike handled.  We timed it right as we pulled into our rest stop just as the rain started!  The rest stop was the delightful Aston Pottery which we shall definitely be returning to - plenty of gluten free, dairy free options, lovely looking main courses and a great gift shop too!  Mr W had a cream tea and I had a hot chocolate.   The rain did stop, but just as we unlocked our bikes it came on again and although we had waterproof tops, it made for fairly unpleasant cycling at points, especially since road bikes don't seem to have mudguards.  However, I took my turn cycling in front, rather than blindly following Mr W, which worked rather better in terms of pacing as I did less freewheeling, and even managed a km on the drops which actually felt quite comfortable.  So all good, until the last 3 miles when I just got tired and didn't want to be on the ride anymore.  It was a shame that I hated the last bit so much as the rest of it had been really good!

I learnt that I need to drink a bit more regularly.  Until I can manage to drink on the bike, I need to stop every 45 minutes I think to top up my water levels.  Having a bottle cage and bottle on my bike will help with this so hopefully Mr W can fit one soon.  Like last time, insufficient calories on the rest stop.  And although I didn't feel hungry at all when we got back, within 3 hours I was absolutely starving and we ended up going out for our anniversary dinner at the rather early hour of 5pm!  And then stopping to get pizza on the way back...  Guess I could pre-empt this by trying to force down food a bit sooner.

Oh and my poor bike is super muddy now so I've had to spend quite some time wiping it down and making it look nice again.