enitharmon
Regular
- Location
- Lancashire-over-the-Sands
Since I got my second-hand bike nine months ago I've been using it mostly for shopping, pootling around the fairly flat centre of Barrow and Walney Island and for carrying my bowling woods to and from the less remote greens in the local league. My fellow bowlers consider me eccentric but then at 58 I'm the baby of the team and given a lot of leeway.
Yesterday afternoon being a rare warmish afternoon I decided to go for a ride and see how far along the W2W/NCN 70 route, which I can pick up 500 metres away, I could get. Sustrans says the first stretch isn't very strenuous. I say Sustrans is telling porkies. I sailed comfortably along the Channelside taking the chicane by the fish dock in my stride; was pleased to make it up the long slog of Abbey Road without stopping to push or pause for breath, enjoyed the down hill run to Furness Abbey. And then I was confronted by Mont Tourmalet. Well, I exaggerate slightly but it's a stretch of 11% coming up from the valley in which the abbey sits. I'm afraid I had to get off and push before I was halfway up. Even after the hill eased up it seemed to be uphill all the way to Newton, where my aching thighs and gasping lungs called it a day and made me turn back. Funnily enough there seemed a lot of uphill on the way back to the abbey. Anyway, I make that 8km out and climbing from sea level to 83m above sea level at Newton, which doesn't feel very impressive to me especially as not many years ago I ran 10km in the time it took me to bike it yesterday. Just to make my trip perfect I had a flat back tyre when I got back to Channelside.
My short term ambition is to get to Ulverston but I don't feel as though I'm going to make it any time soon. Have other bikers any tips for how to approach this goal positively?
Yesterday afternoon being a rare warmish afternoon I decided to go for a ride and see how far along the W2W/NCN 70 route, which I can pick up 500 metres away, I could get. Sustrans says the first stretch isn't very strenuous. I say Sustrans is telling porkies. I sailed comfortably along the Channelside taking the chicane by the fish dock in my stride; was pleased to make it up the long slog of Abbey Road without stopping to push or pause for breath, enjoyed the down hill run to Furness Abbey. And then I was confronted by Mont Tourmalet. Well, I exaggerate slightly but it's a stretch of 11% coming up from the valley in which the abbey sits. I'm afraid I had to get off and push before I was halfway up. Even after the hill eased up it seemed to be uphill all the way to Newton, where my aching thighs and gasping lungs called it a day and made me turn back. Funnily enough there seemed a lot of uphill on the way back to the abbey. Anyway, I make that 8km out and climbing from sea level to 83m above sea level at Newton, which doesn't feel very impressive to me especially as not many years ago I ran 10km in the time it took me to bike it yesterday. Just to make my trip perfect I had a flat back tyre when I got back to Channelside.
My short term ambition is to get to Ulverston but I don't feel as though I'm going to make it any time soon. Have other bikers any tips for how to approach this goal positively?