Today, I Have Been Mostly... by Rob_Barber

Lessons learned from going far today (on the bike):

1. Some drivers, even when they've seen you, made eye contact with you, still pull out anyway and then get gripped by an increasingly poor performance of decision making which despite your best evasive manouvres still brings them that bloody close to you that the corner of their front bumper actually makes contact with your foot !

2. The resulting behavoir of extremely disgruntled cyclist results in both of us having equally large proverbial piles of poo in our pants ! Must calm down! After all, it was perilously close but no harm was done.

3. Riding on main roads is horrible, and quite boring compared with the leafy lanes, and the surfaces are crap! Well, mostly crap (there is a really nice surface for a short stretch of the A49 near Tarporley).

4. I need something mixed into my water, its hard to swallow when its as cold as it was today.

5. Things are not as far away as you think they are, I had to add on bits at the end to get me up to the mileage I was aiming for.

6. I will need to take on board some kind of fuel after about 90 mins to 2 hrs, the stomach ache at 2.5 hrs was horrible, I'm pretty sure this was my body switching into fat burning mode, because after it passed, whilst I could still maintain a steady pace, there was nothing in the tank for shorter little bursts of energy such as starting off from traffic lights and getting up and over short sharp slopes in the road.

7. Bib tights or bib shorts are going to be more comfortable on longer rides, I was really aware of my waistband after that stomach ache had hit.

8. I definitely do need a gel seat.

9. The anti-chafing cream I use doesn't last forever, I'll need to carry a bit with me.

10. I also need to do something about my footwear, because my feet were frozen to the point of paralysis in my toes by the time I got home.

11. with these last 4 lessons, obviously cycling is going to turn out to be far more expensive than running.

12. You can still get up incredibly steep hills after 50 miles of cycling is in your legs. You can also be a bit too good with the psychological approach of "just relax into it, you know you can do it". I got too relaxed, and turned it into a harder job than it would have been idf I'd attacked it with a little bit more gusto and kept the pedals spinning.

13. I do need to focus on doing some more core work over the next few weeks, as my back was not enjoying this ride today (2nd time I've had back ache on the bike).

53.6 miles done, 3hrs, 33mins, and 51secs. Average speed of 15mph (15.8 and quite evenly paced up until I met the Horeb hill at the end - mostly 1 in 7 with sections of 1 in 5).

Oh yeah, and lesson no 14:

I wasn't quite ready for this yet!