Final Training Weekend
There are many things in life that you can successfully leave until
the last minute; Christmas shopping, tax returns and passport applications are some of
my stress-inducing personal favourites. But other things - like cramming in revision
the night before an exam, or trying to get a deep, rich tan on the last day before fly
home from your summer holiday, are destined to end in tears (or at least lobster style
sunburn.) So the final big training weekend was always going to be a bit of a
rollercoaster ride of self-confidence and self-doubt. Our experiences over this weekend
are as follows:
Ged
Saturday: 105 miles, Yorkshire Dales, lots of sun (bright red neck), lots of hills (new
max speed of 52mph, new lowest speed of about 3mph), ended the day tired but pleased.
Sunday (with Gav): 70 miles, Yorkshire Dales, lots of sun (even redder neck), lots of hills
(no new max speed, but lowest speed matched!), botched-up pannier rack broke and ended up
with panniers dragging on the road behind the bike like a parachute on the back of a dragster.
Lots of learning.
Gav
Saturday: 21 miles, Colne Valley, early start, malt loaf as fuel and back in time for
breakfast!
Sunday (with Ged): 70 miles, Yorkshire Dales, no mechanical faults, discovered the benefits
of slipstreaming and eating on the move (fruit pastilles from a vanilla scented nappy bag -
don't knock it until you've tried it!)
Jim
Saturday: Man Flu
Sunday: Man Flu
Pete & Sid’s Oxbridge Weekend…..well, not quite!
Saturday: With the weather set fair, Sid and Pete set out to navigate their way to Oxford
from London trying to avoid main roads. Things were going well until we turned off a country
lane and realised that we were going past the same houses that we’d passed going the other
way some time before, bugger! We were going around in circles! By this point we were near to
High Wycombe and decided that Oxford was probably a step too far so we re-routed down to
Henley-on-Thames and via Windsor on the way home. 105 miles covered with the last half mile
walked due to a flat tyre that Pete couldn’t be bothered to fix!
Sunday: So, we’d failed to reach Oxford but surely Cambridge was within reach, what could go
wrong? Well, our rubbish navigation skills took over again and meant that we were lost for a while
and ended up riding around Hertford, up to Bishops Stortford and back to London. Lessons learnt:
1. Don’t trust signs in this country and 2. Use a more detailed map than a UK road atlas when
navigation small country lanes! Another testing 109 miles in very hot weather gives a hint of
confidence as well as a smattering of fear, LEJOG is going to be a proper pain in the ar$e!!
Bring it on!