So time to get riding. I had an old mountain bike in the garage that hadn't been ridden for years, so I brushed the dust off it and gave it a go. I found it really uncomfortable and quickly realised that it wasn't going to be much use to me, there must be something better than this. A visit to the local bike shop was needed, and a shiny new Tricross caught my eye. With a discount on last years model and 12mths interest free the deal was done!
My first ride was about 15 miles and I repeated it the next day. By the following evening I was sat on the sofa with a an ice wrap around my knee. Perhaps this was going to be harder than I thought! After a few days I started again. This time I concentrated on getting the bike 'fit' right and made all sorts of adjustments so that I had pain free riding over shorter distances. I then slowly got the distances up to about 20 miles.
When we entered the Cornwall Tor sportive it was three months away and attached to the entry was a suggested training program. The program was based on a long ride at the weekends with two or three shorter rides in the week. The longer rides started at 30 miles and over the weeks built up to 80 miles. The mid week rides consisted of short high pace sessions on rolling roads and separate hill sessions. I followed this program pretty religiously and could feel myself getting stronger week by week. By this time I was hooked, I really was enjoying this new sport!
Up until now it's just been an idea that we were chatting about down the pub, but today, Adie went and bought himself a bike. It's a shiny new Tricross Sport, so it looks like we are really going to do this. I am hoping to do the ride on my Scott P2 Sportster. We are thinking of doing the End to End over 14 days which seems quite realistic, having read some other blogs on the net. Just to be on the safe side and make sure we are fit enough, we are looking to do the ride in May 2012, but we'll see how the training goes. One of the biggest decisions is whether to camp or to use B&B's, most of the blogs we have read so far are recommending the bed and breakfast option, if only because there's a soft bed and hot bath at the end of a hard days riding and the luggage requirement is lighter. I have joined a local bike club "Behind The Bike Shed" in Andover to help me get fit for the End to End. I am learning a lot about spinning rather than grinding gears, along with the benefits group riding has on the energy required to cover longer distances. Hills are my biggest weakness and I'll need to do lots of work to improve this, it feels like I am in reverse as everyone else goes whizzing past me on the hills. Adie and I have signed up to do the Wiggle Cornwall Tor in April, this should give us some idea as to our levels of fitness. This will be the first sportive we have ever done, so we have opted to do the 73 mile route, which still covers a lot of hill climbing, including Millook, reputed to be the steepest through road in the country.
With a rapidly approaching 50th birthday looming it was time to do some of those things I'd always been threatening to do before I was too old!
So when George and I had met for a pint one evening and he told me he really wanted to do a LEJOG I didn't hesitate in saying that I would do it with him. I'd actually been thinking of something bigger, but this sounded like a great idea, reasonably achievable and could be a brilliant adventure. And as George said, we would be crossing three countries!
We quickly agreed a few basics, neither of us could take more than two weeks off work, it would be unsupported and would probably include some camping.
All I had to do now was buy a bike and start training!
Well like most great ideas, this one was born over a couple of drinks in the pub. Adrian and I were discussing the adventures we would like to undertake before we were too old to complete them. I happened to mention that I had always wanted to ride from John O'Groats to Lands End. Before long we were talking about buying Bivi bags and sleeping at the side of the road and what a great challenge it would be to do such a long ride. Well that was a few months ago now and things have moved on. We both now have new bikes, we've set a date of 26th of August 2011, we've been training hard and this blog is to keep you all informed of the progress we're making with the training and the ride. Along the way we are hoping to raise some funds for the Childrens Hospice South West, so please click on our Just Giving link and help us to help them.
