Another day, another ride.

This time just a short spin round the local villages on another of our usual routes from Petes place. We did about 25 miles in total, getting the riding discipline going again which meant we kept a good pace all evening. Its was very warm and humid with dramatic storm clouds all around. I am not sure about the other boys but I got back just as the rain storm came.

Back in time to watch most of the Murray game.

The bike is in for a service today so that could be it for me until Saturday now.

We had a good couple of rides this weekend. On Saturday 9 of us rode our usual route past Pattishall, Maidford, Greens Norton, Silverstone, Ashton Hanslope and back through Salcey. The pace was furious for such a rolling route and the weather was good to us. The lead group doing the 50 in 2hours 40 minutes. We all headed back to our respective bases to find somewhere to watch the Lions get beaten up by the Boks. But some even managed to find the energy for another 20 or so miles.

This is a much faster pace than we will ride the actual route in and our discipline was not too good as we broke into groups and had a number of individual  sprints launched to either bridge the gap or to launch an attack. 

On Sunday a smaller group met in town and did our Market Bosworth Market Harbourough, Naseby and back route. Another rolling route and another fast pace – but this time we were much more discliplined with a proper chaingang being set up. For long sections of the ride the four of us managed a faster pace working together that we had achieved yesterday being fragmented.

As I live out of town I split off from the others at a suitable point and made my way back through the villages – it was at that point that I realised the pace we had been achieving as my speed dropped quite a lot for the last 10 or so miles

I did about 65 miles in 3 hours 45 minutes.  which is approx 19 mph (30 kph) average not allowing for a couple of short stops for drinks etc

The conditions on both days were great for cycling – lets hope its the same in four weeks.

Just time now for a quick Pims – well it is the summer

After a week of forced rest due to Last weekends fall I made the Joyriders 5.30am Mandai Loop run on Saturday, followed by a Kranji jaunt with ANZA. Felt pretty good but still some pain when deep breathing – particularly with the pack chasing you down Bukit Timah and up Adam/Lorni Road after a 40k sprint!

Chris & Murli ready for the off

The ANZA ride was good fun and particularly enjoyed the sprint up Buena Vista with Fred at the end of the ride.

Saturday afternoon saw me undertake 3hrs of stand duty at Suntec Shopping Center where Joyriders had a stand at the Active Aging Carnival promoting cycling as a way of keeping fit – for all ages.

How light??

Unfortunately somebody made me drink too much on Saturday night so Sunday was a recovery day – no biking!!!

Sat 20th June Joyriders Mandai Loop/ANZA Kranji 103km 3.23hrs 30kmh
Regards
Chris

With weddings, stag nights, christenings, shift work and all the other things that we have to do just as part of normal life getting time to train is not always too easy.

For me last weeks was quite frantic. Saturday morning was rained off, I had mixed feelings about missing the ride as we wont get an option in July – we will ride whatever the weather. But on the other had there is no point in getting too cold or coming off. I rode by myself on Sunday and did just under 50 miles getting home just before the rain came. I missed the yoga session on Monday as i was working away and Tuesday was too manic to fit a ride in. On Wednesday evening I did a a quick 1 hour dash as Jon tells us that we need to mix up the type of rides we do. Thursday was a day off work for me – I had loads of gardening to do and had to collect children from various points and fixed times but I stall managed about a 2 and a half hour ride doing just over 40 miles on my own.

So when Saturday same I was missing riding in a group. 5 of us decided to do the first 50 miles of the route which you will already have calculated is a round 100 miles. After all the good weather it was disappointing to wake up to drizzle (Chris and Murli have thunderstorms but we have to content with drizzle, I betChris and Murli don’t get drizzle in Singapore, you know that fine rain that wets you through – (copyright Peter Kay)) so we set off into the wet and the head wind, the rain cleared but the wind didn’t. Our route takes us through Whitlebury, Buckingham, Gawcott then over through some smaller villages through Oakley and deep into Oxfordshire. As we shed layers our pockets got fuller. We turned in about 3 hours and after topping up the water bottles in a PETROL STATION we enjoyed more of a tailwind back to home. Its a funny thing cycling as some roads that are flat in one direction are uphill in the other direction!

With about 15 miles to go the group split and the fit boys made it back in 5 hours 40 with me coming back in a respectable 6 hours. By now the weather was excellent about 20 degress which is roughly 10 degrees hotter than when we set off.

When I got back the sign “Beer £2.00 a pint all weekend” at the local was too hard to ignore – well what would you do?

Then onto a camping BBQ at Petes and a couple of swift halfs before trying to get to sleep on an airbed that is self deflating.

6 weeks to go now and one of the riders is getting married next weekend so I am guessing that could be a rest weekend.

Just time to get the bike booked in for a service and consider the delights of shaving the legs!!

Donations are still slow, only GBP210 donated last week, please help to spread the word!

Three mid week rides and an awesome 300km audax ride (actual distance 327km) into Malaysia.  13 of us braved the thunder and distant lightning and met up at 5.30am Saturday for registration.  I was pleased to see that Murli was also there after previously saying that he wasn’t coming. By 6am we were on our way at a steady pace.  After a brief stop after clearing customs we met up with our support driver (ice cold drinks) and we made for the now regular stop at the SPC petrol station (or gas station as I shockingly find myself calling it nowadays – clearly, I have been away from home too long!).  Here we met up with a real hero.  At the back of the station was a padlocked touring bike and a small tent belonging to Eric Smart.  Eric is cycling from Aberdeen to Adelaide www.aberdeen2adelaide.blogspot.com in support of ME.

Having been a previous sufferer of ME, Eric is now trying to help others raising money on his adventure.  He’s been on the road 14 months now and is just over the half way point.  Having suffered a few setbacks wrt visas in Eastern Europe (I haven’t caught up with all of his blog yet) he’s now extended the trip by crossing Canada and the USA.

The previous night was the first time that he’s slept in his small tent for 2 months, normally he sleeps on a small thermo mat but the Malaysian wildlife had got the better of him.  In India he’d witnessed 46 deg heat but it was the humidity in S.East Asia was causing him real problems.

From here we basically followed the first 300k of the previous 400k route.  Chicken Rice in Kluang (140km) followed, after 90km of the ‘road to Hell’ as Wally has now christened it, to Roti Prata in Kotta Tingi.  I was on fire today and led the way for large chunks of the day.  At 200k (approx) we found that 5 of us had broken away, myself, Jeff, Wally, Brian and Martin.  We could see lightning on the horizon and we could feel the rain coming.  We upped the pace for the last 30k to Kotta Tingi and as we arrived, the heavens opened.  The remainder of the crew were stranded and found refuge in a small café 10k back.

This was an enormous storm – the thunder simply didn’t stop and the lightning was both sheet and fork, hitting ground just a few km away every 20 seconds or so.  We were stuck.  After an hour (it still hadn’t stopped) the remainder of the crew arrived in the minibus support car complete with 8 bikes.  Peter had given up after around 100k as his rear hub had seized.  1.45 mins later and the 5 of us decided, enough was enough – we’re going for it!  The rain was still lashing down but the thunder had ceased, the only worry was lightning – but now it was every 5/6 mins rather than every 20 secs and it had drifted further away from our direction of travel.  The reminder of the gang threw the towel in, definitely the more sensible option.

Wow, it was cold, in the last 18months here in SEA I’ve never been cold outside but this was not nice.  I wasn’t the only one suffering either.  Still, away we sprinted, and although we still had 100k to go it really was a sprint.  Eventually we hit the hills of Kulai where the darkness meant we had to slow down to avoid the potholes.  A dash down the main expressway into JB and we were at the border.  Immigration has all recently been upgraded but its not bike friendly.  There are numerous grates with gaps engineered perfectly to both run in line with the flow of traffic and be just the right width for bike tyres.  To cross you have to traverse diagonally, not easy with all the other traffic present.

Having successfully crossed every grate, we were through but here my personal horror started.  Navigating a speed hump my front wheel caught in a concrete drainage groove running at 45 deg to the road.  Before I knew it I was falling and heading straight for the concrete bollards lining the road.  I knew I was going to fall and I knew it going to hurt.  I braced my fall with my left forearm which hit the bollard with a sickening thump, I remember thinking at the time that my arm was going to break.  I was on the deck (I remember swearing – sorry mum!) and Wally approached from behind after witnessing the whole thing and helped me uncleat.  My left forearm and left knee had some nice grazes and my lower back (kidney area was screaming at me).  Worse, my left brake lever was bent and I scratched my handlebars!!

25k to go and not wanting to fail in earning my official 300k Audax medal I sat at the back of the other 4 and in no time at all we were back at Longhouse, arriving at 10pm, 16 hours start to finish but with 11.5hrs of pedaling.  Avg speed was 27kmh, avg cadence 72 (hills), avg heart rate a respectable 132bpm.  I burnt up 7500 calories but that was soon balanced with a beer at longhouse followed by 2 more beers and a huge Cowboy burger at Brewerkz.

It wasn’t until I got home and showered that I saw how badly grazed my back was.  I hope that when I clean my bike I don’t find more scratches! J  A great days biking and I was pleased with my fitness.  No biking Sunday – back is pretty sore.  Hope to make the ANZA run tmrw.

Have a great week.

Chris

Tue 9th June    Joyriders – Tue Sprints             54km       1.52hrs   29kmh

Wed 10th June    Joyriders – Wed Ride               51km       1.45hrs   29kmh

Fri 12th June      Joyriders  - Fri Ride                  50km      1.47hrs   28kmh

Sat 13th June     Joyriders – 300km Audax         327km      11.36hrs  28kmh

It’s been busy at work for me in April and May but training can’t wait either! I’ve been getting in as many rides as possible, even short 25-40km ones if I can’t spare any more time. This weekend was a more intense one.

Mileage and intensity will increasingly become priorities for me. On Saturday, I did a 123 km ride, which was technically three consecutive rides. At 5.30 am was the 40km Joyriders Mandai loop, a short warm-up to the main event of the day. I was impatient to increase the intensity but I also wanted to chat with fellow riders who were taking it easy. So I (foolishly!) shifted to the big chain ring and smallest cog for about half the ride, even up slopes. Particularly foolish given that I’d only had 4 hours of sleep. My cadence stayed in the 40s and 50s throughout, storing up retribution for the rest of the day.

The next ride was the usual Joyriders Big Day Out, with a vast number of riders (a hundred? two hundred?) heading to East Coast Park by way of Punggol and Changi. Because of my foolishness with the gearing earlier, I wasn’t ready for any heroics. Fortunately, none were truly necessary as the little group I was part of (with Chris) maintained a reasonable pace. This ride ends with a meal stop at a food court that, amazingly, only has two drinks stalls open at 9 in the morning. Amazing because a hundred cyclists spend an hour there every Saturday. If more stall owners opened earlier, they’d mint money.

Chris had told me he would do a Kranji loop after this and I joined him for a short part of the way along with Charlie. He continued on after we dropped off. I wasn’t looking forward to the next day’s ride!

123 km
29 km/h avg
Click here for a GPS map overlaid with a Google map plus charts and things. The resolution could be better but it’ll do.

Sunday’s ride was meant to be Audax-style ie no surging, ending average of 28 km/h at the most and no dropping anyone. After Saturday’s ride, the legs were heavy and the heart just refused to wake up and knock itself into the aerobic zone. Extremely unusual for me, as my HR tends to be around the 100-110 mark when I step out my front door and averages about 160-165 for a standard ride.

I finally woke up after a couple of hours of spinning. Surprisingly, although I was hurting from the previous day’s antics, this was just soreness not loss of power. I decided to go steady but keep the pressure on. My speedo has been acting up for the past few days so I didn’t exactly know how fast we were going. It did seem faster than the usual Audax ride and I received the occasional protest while pulling (Lack of a speedo is a great excuse!)

We stopped at Changi Village for a quick water and icecream break, and about an hour later, I stopped to get a large packet of fries (chips!) at Carl’s Junior. Good move as it turned out because the salt must have helped keep the ever-present threat of cramps away. No one wanted to wait for me to finish the fries so I stuck them in my back pocket and popped one in every so often, much to my fellow-riders’ amusement. I’m sure there’s a photo somewhere. Good thing too as the regular intake kept the carbo level nice and steady. Along the way, Peter kept producing one outrageous idea after another for our planned TTC fund-raiser in Singapore.

At the last 3 km or so, I threw down the gauntlet and took off on the traditional ending sprint along Bukit Timah, spurred on by the prospect of a frozen margarita at the end of it all. Yes, a change from the conventional beer. No-one followed and you’ll see from the link below that I didn’t bother keeping up the pace after a while (actually I couldn’t!). But stupidly, instead of being the first to arrive, I ended up being the last. Took a wrong turn, climbed what looked like a >25% incline and back down again, and stopped to ask someone where the heck I was. Good thing the ’speed bump’ was only one or two hundred metres long!

Recovery spin planned for tonight.

142 km
29 km/h avg
GPS data

The cash that is!  The pot is building but, to be honest, not fast enough!  At the time of writing, we have GBP 13,130 – way short of our target of GBP 50,000.  Only 7 weeks to go.  Murli and I planning a fund raising evening in Singapore – we’d love to see as many of the Singapore crew come along for a casual social sometime in the next few weeks.  Watch this space!

Really pleased to see Joyriders introduced as a corporate sponsor – thanks guys!

Feeling a little under the weather this week – sore throat, drippy nose, blah blah blah so opted for a rest on Sunday morning (especially as the third Lions game only finished at 1.30am Sunday).  Hope to regain momentum next week.

So, apart from Fridays early morning ride, it was just the one long ride (157K) on Saturday.

Fri  5^th June      Joyriders – Fri run                          51km     1.46hrs   98kmh

Sat 6^th June      Joyriders – Mandai, Changi, Kranji     157km    5.22hrs   29kmh

Murli and I during Saturdays ride.