Ah, the joys of cycling of a weekend - eating excellent (and plentiful) amounts of food to make up for it.
This weekend I intended to have two shorter rides and so on Saturday I went North over the Campsies which involved a good long climb out of Lennoxtown. Once over the hills I ended up heading towards Stirling on very flat (if exceptionally bumpy) roads. After about 2 hours I was rounding a bend and hit some especially poor terrain to feel my water bottle take a giant leap out of its cage and meet an untimely end on the tarmac. This left me with no drink, 3 hours of riding ahead of me and two ruddy big climbs. I confess I may have said a naughty word!
Fortunately about 8 miles up the road I hit a small village where I was able to replenish my water bottles. The remainder of the ride was uneventful apart from slow moving cars coming off the last hill of the day which took all the fun out of the descent and the exceptionally hairy ride into Glasgow past St Rollox shopping centre (you have to be in the outside lane of 3 on a 40mph limit or you end up on the M8 - this hence involves maintaining speeds of over 30mph for a considerable distance after having cycled 65miles).
So that was a good 71 miles on Saturday. Sunday was an uneventful and fairly flat ride along the National Cycle Route #7 to Irvine, through Paisley then I hung a left to Kilmarnock before dropping by Galston and back to the A77 and a welcome descent into Glasgow. It was 67 miles in all at a rapid 17.1mph but I felt pretty good and have had a darned good weekend all in all.
And some excellent news on the sponsorship and media front from Ian as you'll see from his latest blog too.
Setting off on Le Tour - Brest, Brittany
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Ian (Left) and Matt (Right)
Hello and a very warm welcome to our blog.
We are two amateur cyclists who have decided to follow in the footsteps of our cycling heroes and ride the complete 2008 Tour de France route. This year the most famous cycle race in the world covers 3500km (2200 miles) over 3 weeks in July and takes in some of the highest mountain passes in the Pyrenees and Alps.
We will start two days after the professionals on 7th July in Brest, Brittany and ride the whole thing stage-for-stage, road-for-road, day-for-day as the pros will be. This will result in us arriving in Paris on 29th July, having averaged 100 miles per day. Please click this link to see what lies ahead of us:
http://www.letour.fr/2008/TDF/COURSE/us/le_tour_2008.html
Our aim is to complete the whole route and this means that we will not be racing round but riding at a sensible, sustainable pace. As a result, we expect to be in the saddle for 12 hours on some days.
Friends and family will be driving a support vehicle but we will not have the benefit of masseurs, soigneurs, chefs and team doctors that the pros have. And there will be no Testosterone, EPO or illegal blood doping going on in our Tour!
We hope to raise as much money as possible for two very worthwhile charities: Ian is raising money for CLIC Sargent and Matt for MacMillan Cancer Support. Please dig deep and support these charities via our justgiving pages on the right. Alternatively, please email us with your name, contact details and the amount you would like to donate and we will contact you after we complete our tour.
At this time, a friend of Ian's, Robbie Stuart, is fighting Leukaemia and is a supporter of CLIC Sargent's work. A link to his blog can be found here. Best wishes go to Robbie who is currently recovering from a bone marrow transplant.
Please tell you friends about our blog and what we are doing, and please send us words of encouragement and support.
We will update you with our training and we will be keeping a diary on here as we ride the event in July.
Best wishes
Ian and Matt
Sunday 17 February 2008
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1 comment:
Think you need to tighten up your bottle cages, Robin! Lol!!!
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