Oxford! and a new badge from the scout leader

Having not trained much in January after a very busy December I really needed to get myself in gear and push a little harder than I had been doing. I thought that signing up for a challenge in January would help motivate this but time as always has slipped through my hands and the last few grains of sands remained for me to complete this task. I only had 6 days left to complete my first cycle challenge for the year and today, of all days, had to be the day that I tried. The challenge is called Gran Fondo 1 and consists of exactly this - In the first Challenge of the Gran Fondo series, Strava is challenging you to ride 130 kilometers in one ride between January 1st and January 31st.

The weather forecast made for very bad reading last night and today lived up to all expectations and predictions. Wind, rain, hail, storms, floods were not my friend on todays mission. Today was the last opportunity of the month for much needed training and my desire to complete this challenge set by Strava meant I had to get out in it whatever happened. It was always going to be this way. Life is never easy and in all honesty I would rather have it this way. No PAIN no GAIN blah blah blah…

Needing to clock up 130kms I needed to choose a route and town far away from my start point as I cannot stand going around the same loop 2 or 3 times. Destination Oxford. From all calculations and route planners it seemed to be about 70kms to reach so this would be ideal and the route seemed pretty straight forward as well.

After the lengthy process of getting ready I opened the front door and almost got blown right back in. It looked very grim indeed.

Within 2 minutes of leaving the house I was saturated. This was going to be a very long and testing day. It got a lot worse. 45 minutes on the clock and it was my first power shower of the day heading towards Aylesbury. A medium sized white van took great pleasure hitting a puddle or what looked like a small reservoir at the tasty speed of 50mph. I think all you can do is laugh in these situations so I took it like a man and let the driver of the van enjoy their “points” for covering a cyclist.

A41 safely navigated it was on towards the A418 for a long stint and then eventually the scary, busy and fast A40. Lots of water from the Camelbak, energy drink and pouches of energy gels got me over 2 hours and the road signs for Oxford had single figures on them when related to how far I needed to go to the reach the City. The A40 is a road I will not be taking again and on reflection should never have taken it in the first place. Lots of big coaches delivering hoards of people from the big smoke at very regular intervals led for a somewhat nervous arrival into Oxford.

On arrival to Oxford I wanted to head directly in to the city centre and have a nosey about having not visited before. I immediately seized my opportunity to explore by latching on to the back of a “Big Bus Tour” opened topped bus that wasn’t exactly doing a roaring trade today but it would help me scan the area for the key sights. I liked the look of Oxford and I don’t know why but I was completely surprised by how many academic buildings there are for so many different facets to become a brain box. It seems a good looking city overall and I liked the look of a lot of restaurants, delis, public houses, cafes and so on. It was also at this point I was starting to get a few hunger pangs.

Another pouch of an energy gel was a quick fix and after freewheeling around the city centre I had clocked my 70kms so I spun the pedals around a few more times and looked for the exit. The exit came through the Oxford ring road and out of pure luck than anything else whilst heading to the famous town of Woodstock I found signs that would eventually lead me back to the A418 and towards Thame.

The weather was still relentless on the way back. After battling through to 100Kms in 4 hours my body was telling me a number of things. A quick 90 second pit stop at a bus shelter in the middle of the countryside helped boost my energy by noshing a gel pouch, nourishing myself with a small banana, sheltering from the rain for a short period and lastly a nip around the back for a comfort break.

Re-energised and nothing blocking my mind I blasted back to Aylesbury with the positive feeling of knowing I was only 20kms from home….and then for the biggest scare of the day. Having stopped at a busy roundabout for a while to allow traffic to pass I saw my opportunity to circumnavigate to the direction that I needed. However, I did not plan for an approaching motorist to jump the roundabout at 50pmh and almost take my life. Surely 10mph on a roundabout is fast!!!!????!!!! Time stood still for a moment and the worst thing was being locked in to cleat pedals. Your brain needs to react to too many situations in a ridiculously short time frame of milliseconds. A scramble to the side of the road whilst clicking out of cleats was achieved and the continuous apology from boy racer by holding his hands up in the air to me repeatedly didn’t really cut it. It is at times like that (once you know you have survived) you really want more than a bell on your bike. A ting ting of a cycle bell doesn’t really help you vent.

The last stretch and I was really starting to feel hungry. Having only had two Weetabix for breakfast and a small banana on this gigantic 5 ½ hour cycle I was starting to get apparitions of huge food shaped objects on the side of the road as I cycled past. I was also seriously fantasising about what I would stuff my face with as soon as I got in…….

A dog of a hill was the final obstacle in Berkhamsted and then I rolled back to lock Rex away in the garage for another day. He didn’t let me down again and with each ride my fondness grows and after a hazy, gloomy and unpleasant cycle I had hit 135kms. I had achieved my target and beaten the challenge set by my dictator. Strava who is now becoming very much like my scout leader commended me with this badge of honour for completing the challenge.

As my cycle journey goes on my experience and fitness grows with increased sustainability in endurance, distance and time in the saddle. This has been my longest ride to date and there will only be one day of my ride to Paris that will be longer than this. Slowly slowly catchy monkey as they say….

Here are the full details of the ride:- http://www.strava.com/activities/109112740

Rex the RACER

Soooooo, having spent an enormous amount of time together with my beautiful, loving, reliable and sturdy machine over the festive period, which allowed me to complete my challenge and cover over a whopping 501kms in 7 days, I came to the decision that I wanted to give my bike a name. All this time together and “it” did not have a personality or identity. This had to change. After lots of deliberation and back and forth I came to my conclusion but I had to remember a “name is forever” and not just for Christmas.

Whilst riding for many hours I found over my festive challenge that your mind tends to wonder and it questions everything in your personal set up and even things you know to be true. Now I already do this on a day to day when activity is at an all-time high every second so imagine how active my run away brain was at the time when I was alone together with my bicycle……………it brought epic results (however, that again is another story worthy of an entry and for another time) and ultimately the name of my trusty carrier to Paris and beyond was formed.

To help you understand I may have been slipping in to the slightly deranged element towards the end of my challenge over Christmas attempting to occupy myself en route to completing the 500km challenge. Not exactly a “Wilson” moment but ploughing on towards that when in the saddle for the fourth hour out of five in a Suburban county I think you can imagine something may have to give?!

The attachment to a bike grows day by day and this is becoming a beautiful relationship and the little fella is now treated as an extension to my immediate family…..very scary but oh so real. Midlife crisis or just evolution? Who knows……

I had an idea in mind of whether it should be a boy or girl and most males would go for a girl I think so immediately it should be a boy. Colourings and character of the bike suggest it should be boy, a boys boy, so first phase complete. The name Rebecca was ditched and out of the picture. Now on to the business end. I had two serious names left in the mix and just couldn’t decide between either of them. I really really liked both. So the only way to finalise this was to put the two names in front of a superior judging panel...................which were obviously my two beautiful children ages 6 and 2. There would be no messing about with them critiquing this and head judge Jack would get the strictly casting vote (SEVEN!)…………

So as in the title of the post "REX" was named and crowned and my new baby was born…….

In lighter bike news I had a serious accident recently that taught me a lesson but I guess this guy had a different outcome - www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2539022/Cyclist-22-erection-five-weeks-injuring-crossbar-bike.html

Challenge Over - The Result!

With 407 KMs on the challenge clock I needed 93 KMs to get me to the magical 500 in this festive challenge. I always had in my mind if I could complete the 500 before the end of play on the 30th that would then give me back my life and I could really kick back and enjoy New Years Eve on the 31st.

............So Ride 7, here we go.......... This was never going to be easy but does anyone really want anything handed to them on a plate?

After the last 6 consecutive rides I had acquired lots of pains in areas of my body that I didn’t know you could feel pain. Does this mean I have muscles there? hmmmm. Anyway my bingo wings and thighs were the most battered and the thighs in particular felt as if I had been continuously punched in them until they got to the full dead-leg scenario. That aside I still had the motivation to get on the bike but the next decision was to play the weather waiting game. All through the night and the early morning saw heavy rain, gales and saturated roads. Not exactly a cyclists dream situation. A quick look at the weather report and it suggested by 12 noon that things would start to turn and at least the rain would stop even if the gales would not subside. Frequently twitching the curtains and looking out the window hoping the downpours would stop I started to get the little demon on the left shoulder telling me not to worry and leave the "ride" until tomorrow as you have plenty of time and the weather will be better tomorrow.....blah, blah, blah. One last check on the weather app and it stills says things should clear up so I placed my faith in the BBC weather website and off I go to get ready depositing that demon on the left shoulder on the way out of the door in the nearest recycling bin.

I had an idea of a route in mind that I hadn’t been on before and really wanted to reach the town of Thame in Oxfordshire. As I set the wheels rolling pretty much on the button the rain eased up but the wind did not. I think that was a fair trade off for the final day of the challenge. Heading up through Berkhamsted and Tring the wind was really pushing me back with gusts of over 25mph. About 10 miles in I kind of wondered why I was doing all this again as it was not enjoyable in the slightest but then the focus on the bigger picture, fund raising and accomplishment brings you right back to the task in hand. Having reached Aylesbury in one of my slowest times ever I took the A418 left and headed towards Thame. It was about 18 miles in to the ride when the sun finally broke through the haze and although still very windy it made for things being more enjoyable. I am definitely a sun flower. My mood was up, energy in my legs picked up and I was starting to enjoy the landscape. The A418 introduced me to some interesting town names on route to Thame. Starting with a place called Stone. Then on to Dinton, Ford and there was even a sign for Gibraltar. The one very noticeable thing that connected all of these towns and villages was the expanse of farmers fields that had been saturated with the awful amount of rain received in the last week and it had created lots of large lakes from flooding in the fields that would usually provide many crops for the country.

On arrival to Thame I realised that I only needed to get home and the challenge would be completed. I turned my wheels around, had the wind at my back, the sun on my face and pedalled towards the finish line and the end of the challenge. On a side note being outside for all these hours on the bike has added a decent amount of colour to my face. Every cloud......

Now whizzing back past the towns and villages I had admired on the way to Thame I was enjoying the wind giving me an extra nudge on the way home. However, after 3 hours riding, for the first time since I have been cycling, I felt a "call of nature" coming on. I wondered if I could hold it until I got back but the problem was I still needed to take on lots of liquids during the ride. Also, another consideration was where could I find a private space.

I also had another issue. Due to my earlier curtain twitching and waiting for the weather to turn I left the house late meaning I didn’t have too many hours of daylight to cycle in - so I would need to also attach my lights at some stage which were stored in my rucksack. Reaching Tring enough was enough and something was going to give unless I reacted. So I dismounted, found a dark corner and completed a number 1, attached the lights ready to go and took the opportunity to eat / drink one these energy gels (they are bloody fiddly to try and open whilst cycling). After maximising my pit stop as much as I could it was on to slog out the last 15 miles. They say that people hit the wall at certain stages of continuous exercise and I knew that with 10 miles to go I felt a pain that I hadn't felt before. Not sure this was the wall but felt more like a big hole in the ground that I couldn’t get out of. Sheer determination and a very slow pace got me back to Hemel and then one final climb up the last hill (not what you need at the end of a long ride) got me to the last straight. Looking down at my computer it told me 58 and approaching 59 miles. Now Strava completes the challenge in KMs so when I arrived home there was an anxious wait on upload to see if I had done. I really couldn’t go back out again that day.

On upload I received the message the challenge was 100% COMPLETE! and I had ridden 501 KMs. The relief, joy, emotion, achievement that swept over me was immense. 

Here is the final ride of the challenge - http://www.strava.com/activities/102827308

I packed the bike away for a well-earned rest and looked forward to celebrating the end of the year without a ride! I can not thank my bike enough. It hasnt let me down and I have grown very attached to him (I will also post later in January more about this connection as it deserves a separate entry).

I have learnt a lot over the last 7 days about me, the bike and the future challenges that lay ahead. The experience of this challenge will set me in good stead for the future and I am delighted to have completed this challenge within 7 days of the allotted 8. Having only taken up cycling 4 months ago I am very proud of where I have got to this quickly and looking forward to improving and developing further. The basic principles applied have been ensuring I had the right tools for the job, train well, addressing nutrition and taking relevant supplements before, during and after along with an enormous amount of determination which have served me well.

Most importantly this has been an incredible fast track training programme for my cycle to Paris in April this year. I have been tested to my physical limits and started this challenge on 24th December in the dark at 5am with excitement, intrigue and anxiousness and it aptly finished in the dark on the 30th December, 7 days later, with exhaustion, relief and a huge sense of achievement.

I have already signed up to another challenge for January which I will update you all on shortly.

HAPPY NEW YEAR to all!