nearly 30miles in and about to hit Barry Knows Best
So another Wednesday afternoon training ride.
Slightly changeable weather that included bright sunshine and thunderstorms made it a lot more akin to likely conditions for the Kielder 100 in September.
Starting from Dorking the plan was to ride around 40miles to get used to being in the saddle plugging away for a number of hours.
A slightly late start meant not getting to Dorking until about 2.5 and then it is a couple of miles along the road until getting to first bridleway of the day in Westcott.
There is apparently an off-road way of getting to the start of the route but thought this was probably not the best day to be experimenting with new routes.
Summing up the ride goes something like this:
- Westcott to to Holmbury Hill via Abinger Hammer
- Yoghurt Pots, bit of singletrack off Telegraph Row and up to Leith Hill via Greensands Way
- Summer Lightning and down to Westcott
- Westcott to to Holmbury Hill via Abinger Hammer
- Barry Knows Best, Pitch Hill and back through Peaslake
- Holmbury Hill, on to Telegraph Row and Letih Hill via Greensands Way
- Summer Lightning and then down to Westcott
- Back to Dorking
Does not seem like much written in that way but totals 43miles, took 5hours in changeable weather conditions.
A number of things were learnt in preperation for Kielder:
- Take more food – No matter how much you think you will need take more
- Just lycra is an option – <hang head in shame>may sound (and look) terrible but when covering that amount of distance just lycra and not having baggy shorts to rub is a good thing </hang head in shame>
- Eat shockbloks earlier – don’t leave it until the last 6 or 7 miles, make sense really
Plan is the next Wednesday afternoon ride will break through the 50mile mark.
Got to say the idea of doing another 57miles on top of what I rode is more then a little concerning…
surprisingly empty holmbury hill @ 6pm on a Wendesday
Bear in mind that a fair old chunk and Keilder is on fire roads so it’s reasonably quick.
My 4 hours round glentress at the weekend were possibly not ideal in this respect as most of the climbing there is rocky single track which is much slower.
But yeah, eating and drinking enough is hard to get right I think. Basically I think the answer is little and really very often.
I think the key then is to try and set a reasonable pace on the fireroads, practice a bit of drafting beforehand. No sprinting off if I have chain issues though.
Just want to have confidence in having enough in my legs to keep going.
Will probably carry more food than I need between stations so that can eat as and when I feel the need to.
I think for drafting to work it might require more speed that I’m likely to manage ;)
Ah well, nice idea.
Better do some more training then!