HUGGBEES

I wake up at 3h30 to get ready for the 4h30 ride. No sms from Sean, so I sms him. He gives me some girly excuse about a cold or some other rubbish. Luckily, Dereck was still keen and let me know when they were climbing my local hill. He was joined by two chicks, and already I started thinking this was going to be a nice and easy ride. I was so wrong.

The chicks pulled out infront of us and basically rode away from us for about 15km. During this time, Dereck let me know that he was only doing 50 or 60km as he has a meeting at 8. I figured I’d ride a little harder, so we caught up with the girls and gave them a bit of stick. We were riding into a headwind for half the ride (25km), and it got better when we turned around. We averaged just above 19km/h going out, and by 50km, we were averaging 25km/h. Not bad going.

I rode up their hill, with Dereck and me doing hill sprints (just. outright. stupid), and on the final part of the hill raced to the top (even. more. stupid). They were on their home stretch, I had to ride down the hill I just rode up and ride up again to get home. Seeing as I’d only done 50km or so, I wanted to extend it to 100km if possible but those hill sprints had cooked me.

In the end, I did 65km at 24km/h (I blame morning traffic for the slowdown), which I’m not terribly unhappy about. And on the ride with them, I was easily the strongest in the group (they do more training, so were probably tired). I have since developed a theory about an “easy” ride before the actual ride. I am sure I’ve read about something like this before, but today it seemed to kinda come together. Also, for all my long rides from now on, I will ride out of the house with a peanut butter and honey sandwich.

The weekly mileage is therefore: 50km Wednesday, 30km yesterday, 65km today = 145km. And I don’t feel too horrid. Will try do an easy spin ride tomorrow, or even go to a spinning class. Feels good to be getting comfortable on the bike again.