Started off at a surprisingly brisk pace, with one guy in a black jersey putting in an "attack" on the second hill of the day. I chased him down and looked back - we'd left the pack behind. I sat up and waited for them to catch me. We eventually came back together and continued at a reasonable speed for the next 10-miles or so. Then we got lost a bit and ended up doing a 5-mile loop and back onto the road we were on 15 minutes before - oh well!
I had no idea how far they wanted to go today and didn't ask - I was just enjoying the warm sunshine and taking pulls into the wind - feeling strong again. At one point we turned onto a pretty steep narrow road that twisted through the back of a little village and over a couple of bridges. We realised at the top that we were 3 people short. The leader of the group and I freewheeled back down the hill to look for them - 2 we found but it was the tall Discovery kit clad guy that was missing. The 2 that were found said they'd been waiting for him but they rekoned he must have taken a wrong turn. He knew the way back home apparently, so we climbed back up the nasty hill.
Took off on some nice quiet roads which were new to me and even saw a deer shoot out in front of us - really beautiful as it stood in a field with its white fluffy backside to us - amazing. Eventually the leader of the group guided us onto a road that turned with the wind and suddenly we were flying along at 25-30mph. This didn't last long, though, as we turned onto the main Hitchin-Codicote road that had a nasty cross wind. Dropped the guy in the black jersey, so we waited for him to catch up - he hadn't been eating anything, so I gave him my last gel. He seemed to be OK for the next few miles, but eventually I looked behind and I noticed that the group was down to just 3. The black jersey guy and one guy on a fixed gear bike had both been dropped. The three of us continued.
The pain was starting to creep into my legs as we passed the 60-mile mark and my turns in front stopped - I was hanging on now. The last big hill of the day was hell as I gritted my teeth and stayed on the leader's back wheel. The third guy was slipping back. Eventually he did fall away and it was just the leader and I. We flew through Potter's Bar and I held on all the way back home, with the leader living a few miles just passed where I live. We shook hands and split.
I realised that this was the longest ride I've done since starting cycling again and I'm suffering from it - much pain coming from my legs and feet. In all a painful yet satisfying ride - I got to drop 4 out of 5 guys on a group ride and it feels really good!
View this ride data at Motionbased
| Distance: | 134.7km / 83.6 mi |
| Time: | 4:51:10 |
| Speed: | 27.8kph / 17.2 mph |
| Pace: | 3' 29 min/mile |
| Calories: | 5054 |
| Heart Rate: | 141 bpm (Avg) 182 bpm (Peak) |
2 comments:
nice ride. i see you upload to MB, but use BonesInMotion to blog the ride. any reason you dont just blog it from MB? just wondering as i am thinking about paying for MB service. later.
I'm using a free MB account and don't think it has a "publish to blog" feature like BIM does.
Don't pay for a MB account - just keep a record of the ride links in the Digest area ( somewhere away from MB - for example as I do on my blog), so if you want to view a ride thats more than 10 entries back, just make sure you're logged out of MB and click on the link that's been saved away from MB. Voila, complete access to all your MB rides.
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