First long bike ride of the year

Here is today’s IDEAfit photo a day image for the topic ‘Fun’. My idea of fun today was a 65.5km (40 mile) bike ride with friends 🙂

Recently training has felt very difficult and I haven’t enjoyed it, so it was nice to go out for a ride instead of running!

I’ve been just about managing to get on top of my emails (although I’m still working on finishing off the 20 blog post drafts that I’ve got!) One of the emails that I got yesterday was from RunKeeper:

I wasn’t aware that I’d done more running than usual, but I’ll take any running-related PB right now!

I also received this tweet a few days ago, and have responded to it, so am eagerly awaiting a delivery 🙂

I’ve also responded to this message that a friend posted on Facebook. What have I let myself in for?!

So, back to today’s activities – a long bike ride with ‘Bike Gang’. Some of the regulars were missing and there were some new additions, so today’s group consisted of: Roelie, Stuart, Katherine, Rob and I. We met at The Common and set off to complete a ride that we aborted a while back.

It was gorgeous weather and I was really pleased to be out. About half way around, we stopped for everyone to take on refreshments. I drank some of my water and had a blueberry Clif bar. It tasted delicious, but was very chewy!

The route was far more hilly than I had anticipated, and the downhills were very gravelly, so I wasn’t able to go as fast as I’d hoped, but when Katherine announced that we had done 40km and were on the home stretch, I realised that I had maintained a reasonable pace. My initial aim had been to keep an average of at least 20 km/h, but I realised that I ought to be able to average 21 km/h… then as we got closer to home, I wanted to make it 21.1 km/h as I like the idea of being able to cycle a half marathon in an hour. (Yes, I love geeky stats. We failed to beat the elite marathoners, though, as we took 2:05 to do 42.21km!)

When we got back to Southampton, we stopped at Sainsbury’s to buy some bread, cheese, hummus and bagels before heading to Katherine’s house for a feast in the garden. The weather had been surprisingly warm whilst we were out cycling and it wasn’t too bad when we were in the garden, although I had to put my arm-warmers back on.

After our refreshment stop, Stu and I cycled home where I was quite pleased with my stats for the day:

It was fantastic to get out on my bike and after I’ve recovered from Brighton Marathon, I’m looking forward to starting my training for Challenge Weymouth 70.3 (September). I’ve got a Sportive planned for the week after Brighton and then my first triathlon of the year is the weekend after that! Have you planned your races for this season?