After yesterdays trials, I was a bit nervous of the 65 mile return ride.\u00a0 When I woke up, my legs felt pretty stiff after pounding against the wind for 7 hours yesterday.\u00a0 So I took things easy in the morning and didn’t leave until midday – and a good multistage breakfast (cereal, orange juice, two lots of toast + marmalade and a bacon roll).<\/p>\n
The wind had dropped down to 5mph, but more importantly it was now behind me.\u00a0\u00a0 What a difference!\u00a0 I streamed along using the top three gears rather than the bottom three.\u00a0 After taking the first few hills easy to test my tired legs, I started picking up the pace and, by the time I got to Douglas I was actively attacking hills – changing up and dancing on the pedals to power up them.\u00a0 These were the same hills that caused my suffering yesterday, and today they were like a red rag to a bull.<\/p>\n
To tell the truth, I’d pulled out all the psychological tricks.\u00a0 I listened to music most of the way – and it was cheese like Feeder’s Buck Rodger and Just A Day that worked the magic.\u00a0 I must’ve listened to that track about four or five times whilst attacking the steeper hills.\u00a0 And, thanks to yotube, I needed something catchy to keep this evil song<\/a> out of my head – “if this don’t make your booty move, your booty must be dead!”.\u00a0 Psychological warfare, I tell you!<\/p>\n I left the GPS and cycle computer in my panniers so that they could discuss numbers with each other wihtout distracting me.<\/p>\n I ended up doing the 65 miles in 4h50m.\u00a0 So that’s 130 miles and nearly 12 hours of cycling this weekend.\u00a0 It’s probably my last big training effort before doing the LEJOG ride itself.\u00a0\u00a0 I still have a month to go, but apart from riding the XC course at Fort William, I’m doing real world (non-cycling) stuff the rest of the time.\u00a0 I’ll do some speed training during my cycle to work, but pretty soon I’m going to taper off my training and rest to repair my body.<\/p>\n Food for the day: about 1l of water, plus 400ml of lucozade, wine gums, macaroon, a bounty bar, most of a fruit&nut bar.\u00a0 The macaroon was the win of the day – the top ingredient is sugar, next on the list is glucose!<\/p>\n