Thanks guys - that was actually the biggest CycleChat turnout for me so far I think. Longers was only going to come up the first climb with us but in the end he came along for the rest of the ride.
We were really lucky with the weather. It was dry, not too cold and we even had some sunshine. In fact, my face is red from the amount of UV I was exposed to. When we got back to Hebden Bridge, all the roads were wet but we never saw the rain.
The feared icy roads never materialised except on the tight left hand bend coming off the fast descent from Oxenhope Moor. Shaun overtook me on the descent and I saw him go dangerously wide round the bend - he went right over the other side of the road. Fortunately there wasn't anything coming the other way. He said that his back wheel had started to slide out from under him. Yikes!
I felt pretty unfit after my long lay-off and wasn't able to keep up with the others on any of the climbs.
We had a good stop at Coldwell Activity Centre cafe and once again I decided to have both soup and a sandwich!
We decided not to do the original route back via the tough climb at Thursden. I quite fancied a burn-up down the A646 to Todmorden after all of the climbing that we'd done, so we headed that way via Worsthorne. It would also bump the mileage up a bit.
I thought that I was getting tired. In fact, I
was getting tired but it turned out not to be just from the hills and the distance. On the false flat through Holme Chapel, the others just rode away from me without even trying. It's only about a 2.5% gradient so I shouldn't have been dropped like that. By the time I got to the start of the descent towards Todmorden my legs were shot. Despite my large size I could only get to about 20 mph down Cliviger Gorge and through Portsmouth and Cornholme. The others were waiting for me in Todmorden.
I had been getting increasingly annoyed with rubbing sounds from my Crud Roadracer guards. I really like this product but you do have to adjust the Cruds carefully or they rub. It turned out that my rear guard was jam-packed with thick mud. I lifted my rear wheel off the ground and stomped on a pedal and guess what? Yes, my wheel stopped dead! It did less than 1/4 turn before the friction stopped it. I'd pedalled who knows how many miles with the equivalent of my back brake being stuck on - no wonder I was knackered! Calum helped me scrape the gunk out and after that it felt like a new bike. It was easier riding on the flat back to Hebden Bridge than it had been going downhill to Todmorden!
It was a really nice day out on the bike! It has made me more realistic about next week's mini-North-West Passage though. I think 75 miles will be quite enough for me at my current level of fitness!
[Shaun - I'll work out today's route stats for you tomorrow.]
trio25 said:
Longers rode his fixie???? How were the downhills?
He had front and rear brakes fitted so he didn't have to do the mad pedalling thing on the downhills if he didn't want to. Having said that, I was usually in front on the downhills so I didn't actually see what he was doing. I'd certainly feel more inclined to give fixed a chance myself if I had 2 brakes to slow me down in a hurry.
Oh, here's the group photo taken at Coldwell Activity Centre. L-R: Calum, colly, bokonon, bromptonfb, svendo, zacklaws, Me (ColinJ), longers