Friday 24 June 2011

Misty marple take 2

Misty Marple by ttbudd at Garmin Connect - Details
Out on the Marple circuit today. It was good weather and I thought that it would be an intelligent thing to get out and ride. I was intending on going out with Kinder Velo yesterday but unfortunately I was only just driving past the station on my way home as they set off, which was a bit unfortunate.

I have done the route before and it took just over 2h30, so I was intending on easily smashing that today- I didnt need to route find, and could just bash my way round the route.
Hoooo.... but my legs are still pretty knackered. Not so much that it was a problem, for the most part, but I could feel it on the uphills- and there were a fair old few of those.

Going around the route was great, I felt myself getting into the swing of it, and 3/4 of the way around, just as I got to the top of a horrible technical climb I realised that the glasses I had taken off and hung on my bag straps was no longer there.
And they were Lynnes glasses, not mine. And I've already lost 2 pairs of them in the past.
So I turned around and rode off back down the hill to search for them. As luck would have it, they were all the way down at the very bottom of the climb, so all the good time that I had made up by not having to navigate was totally negated by having to climb back up the hill again. Ah well.

After that there was another technical uphill on which I kept not being able to cycle in a straight line, which made things somewhat more complex. I'm not sure if its because I'm just not as good as I used to be, or because Im on a bike which has a very different geometry to my previous one, which I rode day in day out for about 6 years, or because the terrain Im riding over is a lot more technical than I've really ridden on before, but I feel like I've lost a bit of my ability... more time on the bike is certainly called for, and I have no excuse whatsoever.
I finally got back in just under 2h 30, so a slight improvement, but not really- having ridden 37km with height gain of 887m.
not too bad, but I really needed the chocolate milkshake when I got home!

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