Distance: 41.5 miles. Elevation: 1482 ft.
A beautiful day for riding around the Vale of Kent!
12.5°C with a slight breeze. It was a beautiful sunny day. The roads were mainly dry. Although there was still a fair bit of slosh around, I didn’t wear my shoe covers because I would have been too warm – good decision. I wore my Castelli Sorpasso Bib Longs for the first time and they felt great – it’s true: you get what you pay for!
I chose a flat route for this ride – this is about as flat a route as I can ride around here considering that I live at the top of a hill. My knee is still not back to normal and I didn’t know if I could cope with a 40-mile ride. Even though it was nearly all flat, this ride took it out of me – I’m more out-of-condition than I had realised, having done no real cycling since mid-December. It’s amazing how, in the space of ten weeks, you can go from doing a very hilly 140-mile weekend comfortably to struggling on a flat 40-miler. I even felt uncomfortable on the saddle after about 30 miles! Also I have realised that turbo-training for 30 mins every day still doesn’t prepare you for spending 3 hours in the saddle outside!
There was one very unusual aspect to today’s ride, and that was the fact that in all those 41 miles on such a mild sunny day, I didn’t pass a single other cyclist! Weird!?!
I’ve just noticed: This ride took me nearly 20 minutes longer than it did a year ago!
