Saturday morning instead of a run I went with Minnie to a spin class at her gym. We had high hopes for this class as we had been told by Tim all about it. He was right. The guy taking the class is very camp and a scream! Funny commentary the whole way through and amazing music – last track we were all sprinting on the bikes to Tina Turner Shake a Tail Feather! Hilarious! For most of it I was thinking wow he is checking Min out for the whole class – someone has an admirer and then we realised he was actually checking himself out in the mirror behind us! Amazing!
Yesterday I had the Bike Event Tour de Tendring. Off we set at the usual obscene hour to get to the event for a planned cycle ride. This was no usual event for me it was the first cycle event that I could compare from last year. Last years ride I did in 4 hours and 5 minutes and I really wanted sub four hours but I was heckled by some young lads in a car something about being fat and my front tyre being flat. I was fat but the front tyre wasn’t flat and as you can guess it meant the last 10 miles of this ride I had a major attitude shift and wanted to just get off the bike and stop.
So anyway having completed last years ride and training a lot from the beginning of this year I would be able to do it again and see what improvement there was being able to compare the exact same ride and route. So off we set me and the hubby and also our lovely friends Tim and Min. We had said at the beginning that we would go off as I didn’t want to hold anyone up. It is a lovely ride, mostly country roads, although they had kindly resurfaced recently which mean we had miles of stretches of lose gravelly road which is not ideal for road bikes but hey ho once bedded in will be amazing for next years ride! Though for this year does leave you with a rather sore under carriage.
It is pretty flat with only a couple of hills but a few long drags of road – I would rather do a hill than a long gradual drag any day. Much to my surprise we ended up with a train of people behind us at a couple of points! And had about a decent stretch with two other riders and the four of us taking it in turns on the front. It was windy at parts and as the hubby wanted me to ‘enjoy’ the ride and complete it off my own steam, and to be fair I would rather see a result of my own effort, he was lucky enough to sit behind me for most of it! At one point he shouted out to me this bloody wind and then said want me to have a go on the front? I very sarcastically said oh yeah that might be good! There was only about five miles left! He stayed on the front for a short stretch and we were on the home straight. He had been winding me up that I should brace myself for a killer of a hill towards the end and when I realised there was not one I was pretty pleased!
The end result was that I managed to get sub four hours and actually managed to get sub three and a half hours! Would have been quicker if him indoors didn’t need to stop for the ladies room (yes I got that right).
Him indoors, aside from riding with me, is also helping me with my fuelling as I am rubbish. I feel ok so don’t eat or drink and then will flag a bit. Although yesterday he gave me some of a bounce ball – was like wallpaper paste. He said to drink when I swallowed it – was pretty hard to swallow! Won’t be eating those on the bike again though could help with the diet as it is like eating glue so could fuse my mouth shut.
Favourite part is the stretch along the sea front where you just go – so much fun!
And according to Strava I was fourth overall for the ladies and had an average moving speed of 17.3mph and over 35 minutes quicker than last year – bloody chuffed with that!
Weigh in day as well today and stayed the same though I am ok with that as I treated myself to cheesecake yesterday!
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