Friends without benefits

A 9am start on Sunday provided my first ride with company. After the extremely nasty conditions of Saturday night and early Sunday morning around 9am the tide had turned and glorious sunshine was beaming down on a very mild morning in Hertfordshire. With my new cycle partner (Andrew) just getting back in the saddle after a while away from biking and continuous operations to his lower torso we would look to take things easy but still put in a shift. We started our ride through the picturesque Ashridge Estate seeing an early morning group of deer’s trotting amongst the trees with sunshine casting beautiful shadows, colours and reflections amongst the forest.

Once through the estate we headed towards Tring and Andrew was telling me about a KOM that descended down in to Aldbury on the way to Tring. However, the conditions were still very wet and seemingly unsafe to race and look for segment achievements. I think I provided a very nice continual shower for my cycle partner throughout the ride as having no mud guards on my bike and with him following me closely he would have been advised to have wind screen wipers on his cycle goggles. Down we went in to Aldbury and the downhill decent of the KOM was exciting as you could obviously get up good speed but the road was far too windy to take any chances in these conditions. I managed to open up for the first time at the bottom of the hill and the lead into to Aldbury. It was a really great segment and one I will be repeating in the future when the elements are better.

After hitting Tring it was back down to Northchurch and then the painful climb back home. The overall ride was a clocked at a nice round hour and we achieved over 15 miles which is good going considering the elevation. The most important thing was that it was fantastic to ride with someone else. Good motivation, good teamwork and good competition. I think we both still need to find each other’s pace and style but what a great start as I felt pushed on certain segments trying to achieve more than any of my previous rides. Not sure how he felt after, hence “friends without benefits”