Not a lot to report as far as training or racing go over the last few weeks since the North Norfolk Tri, I've blown the dust off the turbo trainer, and done a couple of 6 mile runs just to keep myself ticking over, the Thursday night rides are still happening and are planned to continue until the clocks change.
Last Sunday saw the start of my endurance training begin with a 101 mile sportive ride around Rutland, The Rock estate endurance team consisted of the Asher brothers, Liam, Lee, Mike, Mathew, chris and myself. The weather was pretty grim all day heavy rain and about 25 mph wind.
The jovial mood of the team lasted for about 4 miles, and by mile 10 I was beginning to wonder if I would make it round the route, hills are not something I train on regularly and the first 10 miles were considerably harder than I was expecting, I soon realised I have got lot's of work to do before I could consider challenging for the king of the mountains jersey. Simon had a puncture after about 6 miles but the main group didn't wait to help we carried on at a slow pace.
By the 40-50 mile point I was feeling drained and was having thoughts about slowing down and riding on my own, after a quick motivational speech from Liam I put those thoughts from my mind and carried on.
By mile 80 I was starting to wish the ride would end especially when we came across more hills and I started to get dropped from the front a bit, although once the road flattened out a bit did manage to catch up again.
In the end decided that it was a great ride despite the weather, with good company and must have done the legs some good, 5hrs 18 mins riding time gave an average speed of 19mph although our total time was 5hrs 33 mins allowing for a minor crash and another puncture
Now need to keep the long rides going to build a good endurance base over the winter.
