Road rides gone wrong seems the STW theme of the week.
The aim was to just ride the Hemels reliability trial. Set the alarm for 6am ready to be picked up at 7.45. Didn’t adjust it for Sunday and woke up at 7.36, threw my kit on and left without eating a thing or having that all important poo. 100km on empty wasn’t going to kill me.

Got there to find it wasn’t waymarked, and I need reading glasses so the paper map was pointless added weight? No problems we’re setting off in the fast group anyway, if we get lost we’ll hook up with another passing group.
0.75 miles in a car refuses to give an inch in a singletrack lane sending the initial wave of fifteen riders into the ditch. My mates mech and hanger get it so we turn back.
I leave him and ride home using an old 100km route, for some reason I have a headwind which ever way I go, and my mudguards wont stop rubbing.
Then with ten miles to go I get passed by a guy on a stunning bike, looks like Dura Ace electronic and it’s sporting some fandango aero rims and it’s spotless…how?
As I’m going over the top of Ivinghoe Beacon I get knocked about by the wind, even my basic Aksiums are being blown about causing a few botty burps, how the **** do you manage with deep aero rims on days as windy as this?
Nearly home now and I come across a road closed sign, well that doesn’t apply to me. A bit later on the flood in the road has ****ing white tops on it. Ha ha it’s below the BB….until I get to the middle and it’s over my ankles. 😳
I’ve got my jim jams on now and I’m not moving.

Well, at least Lovejoy is on Yesterday now.

Well, that has made my decision about whether to go out for a road ride (only 20 or 30 miles, but still….) or go to the gym for a session & a swim that little bit easier!

I thought that was the purpose of the Hemel reliability, to get as many folk down with winter flu as poss…

A few of us turned early today. To windy. .. only 50 miles

76 miles for me on the Roadie and through the Downs, still loads of field run off and it’s kinda gonna be that way for sometime me thinks.. Still I hacked along until I got two front punctures, first was gravel, fair enough so headed into High Cross Church to get out of the wind to fix said puncture to be met with a hall full of parishioners .. Two oop’s and an apology later and I was welcomed in ” all welcome in Gods house” said the verger.. Brilliant.
Then hacked back toward the van and the second puncture blow out going through deep mud on the road, must have been flint.. Fair enough I am in the land of flint n all.. Bit chilly fixing that one, but hey..
I broke into a sweat, something I don’t do very often and it started to drip down my forehead under by fleece beanie.. First time in a long time that’s happened..

Bring it on, bring it all on I’m loving being back on the bike..

Sitting drinking tea, tingly legs, breathing easy.

And shorts, c’mon fellow mountainbikers shorts and overboots?

‘Get Cycling Right’

It was windy today.. didn’t do any of the hemel rides this yr as planned as I’m trying to learn pace on my own, that and going off big-bunch riding on these roads. Got the chiltern 100 loop done on my own and first 2/3 of it was uphill or a slogging headwind. And why is it I flat on that loop, every time? Gatorskin 25s and the only time they ever flat (ok only a few times in last year or so) is a good few hrs into that particlar loop. Welcome break in the summer, damn cold this time of yr..
Saw a chap on an S5 with deep sections today nr Ivinghoe, leccy gears too. He was going ok, I wanted a bit of that aero stuff today!

Wonder if it was the same bloke, all black from what I could see.
Getting fed up with these Cruds and RaceBlade jobbies, think I’ll go anti social and whip em off.

GCR

60 uneventful, but windy miles on the Southend wheelers reliability trial, driest roads I’ve seen for weeks… 🙂