Your ride today.... (part 1)

[HLaB]

Best day of the year so far! A tad blowy but beautifully dry and warm (must have been a lot of rain last night as the puddles were deep but the roads were mostly dry in between), we headed out to Packers Lane, where I started to feel the heat, luckily the wind was behind me then but when the group accelerated up to 28mph +, I dropped back to a more sustainable 23mph. I had a rear brake failure at one of the roundabouts approaching Stirling had a close up with a kerb @23mph and was glad I was on my own at that point and was able to lean hard to avoid it, whoever said Gators were skittish in the wet was wrong, my front a gator stuck like glue thankfully When I muster the energy I'll have a look at it, its either grit in the pad or no pad left!
Oh and we passed Scook of this here place too.

 

[Paladin - York]

North Yorkshire

Home to Hovingham via Gilling East and back via Whenby. 24.5 miles.

Hovingham Spa Tearoom provided the sausage roll & apple slice.

Weather: a consistent & fairly strong westerley, no rain, roads not too bad mostly dry but with puddles in places. The off-road bit twixt Cawton & Hovingham was quite rutted with side to side puddles in places.

 

[coffeejo]

Went out with the local kids' club and had a really good time, especially when I talked one of the younger and slower boys out of quitting on a hill. He ended up being the only one to make it up to the top, much to his mum's horror, as she was desperate to quit and walk but couldn't so long as *he* kept going . The look on his face when he reached the top and saw the other boys pushing their bikes was fantastic

 

[NormanD]

15 enjoyable miles on the new steed, it'll take an operation to remove the smile from my face, then again tonns of face surgery wouldn't help

 

[Edwards80]

Went out with the Mrs on the MTB's - Not put nobbly tyres back onto it yet so I had some interesting sideways experiences in the mud on the slick tyres, good fun though. Nearly ran over a rather tame mallard. :S

 

[Paulus]

Another 30 mile jaunt around the lanes of Hertfordshire. Barnet, Potters Bar, Essendon, Hertford, Bayford, and back.

 

[Hacienda71]

A very windy 20 miles out through Knutsford and Tatton Park for me testing my new Chinese carbon special I built up over the weekend. It rode quite well considering a lot of the ride was spent trying to avoid being blown over.

 

[Wades]

Another windy ride of 30 miles through the lanes of the surrey/kent borders this afternoon. Very nice it was too.

Even the 'chase the cyclist in the far distance' bit that absolutely knackered me!

 

[BigonaBianchi]

I got as far as the end of the hallway here before the tube deflated Agaainnnnnnnnnnnnnnn

 

[fenlandpsychocyclist]

Decided to head northwest into lincolnshire today rather east into norfolk, mainly because on long rides i prefer to head into the wind early on, with a tailwind home.

It took me 3 hours to cover 28 miles, such was the strength of the wind across the lincolnshire plains ... i never dropped from middle chainwheel to the granny gear though.
Had a couple of instances where i was "leaning" into a sidewind which suddenly got cut off when a large vehicle passed, although i was on the drops and using the insides of my
wrists braced against the underside of the handlebars which helped hold the front wheel straight.

I was on the trek again today, which is much less twitchy in sidewinds compared to the coyote ... i think the slight difference in fork angle between the two bikes makes all the difference.

14 posts back i said i'd be happy with just 30 miles today, to add to yesterdays 70 miles. I slightly overdid it .... 51 miles today.

Edit ... the wind was so strong it actually blew my 1 litre waterbottle and cage clean off the bike and i had to nip down a dyke to retrieve the bottle!!! The moral of the story, halfords £5 plastic water bottle holders can't withstand a 30 mph sidewind.

 

[coffeejo]

50 miles out on the Somerset Levels, accompanied by glorious winter sunshine. It was pouring with rain this morning, but the clouds parted just before I left the house and didn't regroup until shortly after I returned. How often does *that* happen?

 

[HLaB]

I was supposed to meet a couple of mates for a cycle but when I woke up it was near freezing and a sleet/snow storm was forecast and en route I got a text from the mate to say it was too icy his way and he was calling off but fortunately other folk were at the meeting point and we modded the route to avoid the worse of the ice and the storm seemed to stay hung over the Ochils and we were OK. I ended up doing 53 miles in the end.

 

[MattHB]

Lovely ride into work this morning from GF house on new roadie. Still feels like cheating! But it's going to take ages to get used to all the different hand positions of drops. Braking seems really weird on the hoods and I can't really reach from drop position.

Need some good miles to break myself in. Damn comfy tho, although im not sure I'll use the lower position very much as it feels so strange.

 

[fenlandpsychocyclist]

Another 30 miler across the windy, cold , dark fens "after a hard day at work".
Got nuked by a hail-storm ... painful!!

Once mycyclinglog updates (below) i should be about 2 miles off 500 ... so far this year.
Not bad for someone who is clinically obese.

 

[HLaB]

Another 30 miler across the windy, cold , dark fens "after a hard day at work".
Got nuked by a hail-storm ... painful!!

Once mycyclinglog updates (below) i should be about 2 miles off 500 ... so far this year.
Not bad for someone who is clinically obese.

You won't be for long at that rate