Tags
Cycling, Fitness, L, Open Water Swimming, Triathlon, weight loss
Go round and round apparently. Well as long as you keep turning these things called pedals! Finally I’ve managed what I’d consider to be a half decent cycle. A 17mile circuit around Rutland Water 🙂 It was by no means a super quick sporty affair, but I got around with a friend in around 2hrs 15mins and managed to get a decent bit of speed along the straights.
The good thing was there wasn’t a lot of traffic even along the road parts, and we didn’t get any motorists bothering us at all. That’s something that puts me off cycling locally a lot, as I always feel I’m in the way. Today was great though. Well the flat bits were, there were some parts I really loved… but I struggled a bit with some of the hills, particularly the cross country ones. There was one particularly tough one and I had to stop part way up, but I was determined it wasn’t going to beat me, as I was pushing the bike nowhere. After watching my mate slowly make her way up and having a few mouthfuls of my drink I carried on. Slowly! My mate had waited at the top and was getting a drink, and just as I hit a flatter part I shouted ahead “that little f**ker” and my mate burst out laughing, which made me start laughing as well! I ended up having to stop at the top as we were laughing so much!
About a mile later my friend changed gear and did something the bike didn’t like, which ended up in her chain falling off. Both of us just looked at it blankly for a bit… she did some fiddling and then ended up wheeling it a few metres uphill to a pub where a fair few cyclists were sat. After ‘testing it’ the chain promptly fell off again, and she ended up in a heap on the floor to the amusement of a pub garden full of people. This kind of thing usually only happens to me! But after her asking loudly if anyone knew much about chains, a guy put down his burger and sorted the situation in about 30 seconds. Bless, there are some nice people out there 😉
So other than that, the rest of the ride was fairly uneventful and we enjoyed the scenery, bahhhed at a few sheep (and I wondered how much I’d get told off if I had a quick swim to cool down) and we got back to the cars in one piece. All in all, not a bad effort… Do I have to do it again to make myself a cyclist? 😛
Sporting a nice tan line from running gps!
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