Well May is over and the last three days were a long weekend, which is always good. I managed to get out and do two rides, a short 30 kms on Saturday and a longer 80km on Monday. Together the two rides took me over 500km for the second month in a row, which I'm very pleased with.
Saturday's ride was with my friend James's brother Rob. Rob is a keen cyclist and brought his Cinelli down from Shropshire for some weekend riding. We'd only been out for 30 minutes when the rain came – we pressed on for a while but it got progressively wetter, so we agreed to cut the ride short and head back. It was a shame as there are lots of great roads round here that I was keen to introduce Rob to, but it wasn't meant to be. I was drenched by the time I got home and poured water out of my shoes. I hate riding in the rain, so it was good to get back and hit the shower. Rob's been pretty much a life long cyclist and is in fairly good shape fitness wise – so it was probably a lucky escape for me that we cut the ride short.
On Monday I ended up going out on my own for a longer ride as I needed to do a further 70km to hit my target of 500km for the month. I felt pretty good most of the way on Monday – I can definitely feel some improvements coming in my leg strength (especially up hills) which is encouraging – so I'm starting to see some reward for the last 8 weeks efforts. In total I covered 83kms and did 1140m of climbing, which I think is a solid effort. It was a grey day as you can see from the photo and was fairly chilly for the time of the year. On this day last year I did my one and only 100km ride in close to 30 degree sunshine (and blew up completely in the process) but I was definitely fitter at this point last year.
On the road on Monday there were quite a few couples out riding which was good to see. The number of cyclists on the roads is definitely increasing which is great. I met a chap called Julian who was out on a Van Nicholas titanium bike and getting in a few miles after an illness. We swapped numbers, so hopefully we can meet up again at some point.
I'm looking forward to riding in June already – I've just had a couple of big pots of energy and recovery drink powder arrive this morning – so I'm all set. First ride of the month will most likely be on Thursday evening with a guy called Chris, who I met late last year and that should be a nice easy ride to kick off the month with.
