Cycle touring

No penny farthing but hills this steep are tough enough anyway!

More to follow, I'm off to bed in a bad mood after my first time trial of the year ended with me posting a terrible time..... Probably something to do with these hills...

Kat and I recently went to the lake district on a cycle tour, 3 days lots of hills and 180 miles. We had planned to ride the sustrans route following Hadrians wall but after the first day we changed our minds. The route takes in some of the most scenic sights in the lakes, or that's what sustrans would have you believe. What we saw was Sellafield Nuclear power station, and about 10miles more of Whitehaven when we got lost.. Hadrians wall seemed to be hiding so we got as far as Carlise and then rode into the heart of the lake district. This was much better, nice landscapes, wildlife and big hills. We rode over wrynose and hardnott pass which have gradients of over 30%! All in all it was a really good, if short, holiday.

It's now Thursday and I have just done my first club time trial of the year. After the open tt on Saturday where I had a bit of a nightmare I'm back to somewhere close to the times I expected. Tonights tt was only a short one, 5.5miles, but I did a fairly good time of 13mins 15seconds. This was obviously on my tt bike... I have done the same course on the penny and I think I did about 21 mins..

VC Sevale open time trial

Well as anyone living in England already knows it bloody cold! Can't believe that on the 29th I will be sucking in lung fulls of freezing cold air doing my first time trial of the year ( on my tt bike, not the penny). I've been riding quite a lot but haven't really done any speed work so no real idea how I will go.

I did do the bike leg of a duathlon as part of a relay team last week, with my dad doing the running, but I find it hard to go flat out when I'm not racing.

Looking at the start sheet Steve Price, a fellow member of my club Worcester st Johns, should have a good chance of a win. Worcs St Johns could have a chance of winning the team competition too as along with Steve we have some quite usefull riders entered. Realisically my aim is to get somewhere near to 25mins. My pb for the course is 24m 2 secs but I'll need the perfect day to get anywhere hear this!

Well I'll update this post later in the week when I've seen a weather forecast for Saturday!...

The time trial is now over, I put in a really poor performance in the worst weather I think I've ever raced in. My excuses for my time are as follows!
1) In the week leading up to the race I went cycle touring with Kat in district and cycled 180 hilly miles in three days, on my road bike with panniers and a bottom gear of 39 / 23... i had a great time though.
2) The weather was terrible, strong winds and rain. I hate getting cold so I made the mistake of time trialing in my water proof, not good for aerodynamics!

Slide show at the Dragon

Some time ago I was contacted by a local cycle club to see if I would do a presentation about my penny farthing adventures. At the time I was really excited about doing it but now the time is almost here, it's on friday 14th at 8pm in the Dragon on the tything in Worcester, I'm getting quite nervous...

Presentations are not really my thing so I hope my slide show goes ok, I'm told people are really looking forward to it so hopefully it will be alright on the night!

Anyway, I'll let you know how it goes.....

Quick update... The show went well, and everyone seemed to enjoy it. The real ale in the pub probably helped though! It's one thing blogging and typing rubbish but it's another to stand up and say it. Not sure I'll do too many more presentations but in the end I quite enjoyed doing it..

I'm not doing much tonight as in the morning I'm doing a local duathlon as a relay with my Dad doing the running and me the cycling. So I'm trying not to drink too much so that I don't let the side down, I expect Dad is having an equally dull night too...