I was intending to take it steady to the square this morning but I see 2 cyclists going fast so I thought I'd catch them up, I managed to and sat about 50-100meteres behind them, ended up averaging near 24mph until I hit the lights in york with the mental wind we had, that first bit certainly never was the cause of my crappy end performance today.
It was quite a quick ride to the cafe stop, only 4 riders, Howard, Dave C, Shaun and me, one bit there was nearly a collision due to a retarded impatient driver not waiting on a wide S bend causing 2 cars to break hard and you could hear the tyres screech of the 2 cars, then it appears as if he quickly swerved at the front
Big hill near Lofthouse, I think?, was very tough, the first bit it was peeing it down and headwind, I kept a good pace and was fairly ahead on that bit of uphill, around 5-10% I reckon, made sure I was not pushing too hard, got to the big hill they cached up but I pulled away again, Howard was having a bad day but I'm sure he got plenty of energy back despite what he said on the quite a hard climb that was harder than the big climb, Howard was in front of me and I was struggling, my pace I could sustain just happened to be his back wheel but he did not like that, I had to back off which I guess gave abit of energy then on the last bend zoom off, was still fun.
Was a tailwind/crosswind for the ride back and was flying along at 25-30mph quite abit of the time, some even on the flat hitting 30ish, I decided to drop myself off the back of the group at the end when I managed to get back on but I did not want to sustain that effort when I was in the process of bonking of decided to take it at my own pace.
Was a good ride but disappointed that I started the process of bonking at around 80 miles, I'll be ordering gels and energy bars for the ride next week can’t have any bonking process starting until 120 miles!!
I'm thinking the reason I started struggling is down to food as near Stillingfleet I had a mars bar, then I set off, near Stillingfleet I had another mars bar, I sprinted up that bit of a steep drag at 23, then turned right into a hard wind, got to Cawood and I had quite abit of energy left so I was able to do 23-30 home, stopped the timer near home then cycled around at like 5mph for 10mins to get my heart rate down, it actually helped and I don't feel dead today, I'm still awake, left not aching as much so they permitted me walking up the stairs which was a surprise too, and then managing to actually turn the PC on and type was also a surprise I'd normally end up laying on bed asleep and waking up in a pool of saliva due to engaging zombie mode after a long ride.
Looking forward to the Tan Hill challenge, unsure what group I should go with, Howard I hope you plan on tkaing it steady?? If it's not too windy something around 17mph avg is the sort of pace I'd be wanting to go at, the PG W2TD was 16.8 for 175 miles.
