Almost an Etape!

This weeks weigh in

Weight this week 99.7kg
Weight loss this week 0.5kg

Miles this week 155
Longest ride 105 miles

At last! I am digitally reduced, now being back into 2 digits (under 100kg) for the first time proper in 10 years (the last 2 times didn't count since they were the result of lots of time in a steam room and lasted for less than a day).

Both Brett (colleague from work and fellow etapper) and I are still alive after yesterdays ride, but only just. A 'farmer' in a mini-tractor had a SMIDSY moment (Sorry Mate I Didn't See You) and went to pull out in front of him descending at 30+mph, only to be stopped by Brett yelling at him (and gave Brett a filthy look for interrupting his driving, on the road he evidently owns). I tried to rearrange my front wheel with a rock whilst descending at similar speed, cue heavy braking and LOTS of slithering to a gradual halt down a very wet steep hill covered in unmentionables. Nearly set a new heart rate record there! Thankfully, there was no puncture, else I would never have held it and would undoubtedly have investigated the braking power of the interaction between lycra and tarmac.

So, almost an Etape? Yesterdays ride was deliberately as much climbing as we could reasonably find in an etape-like 105 miles without retracing our routes too much.

105 miles
2800 metres of climb
22 chevrons on the OS map (14 up, 8 down)
Max Gradient 25% for 1/3 mile (Cleeve Hill)
5 flooded roads
9:37 elapsed (including, for me, about 1 hour stopped)
Unfortunately, the only time we can be sure of is the 'elapsed' since every piece of timing equipment we own broke during the ride, including my new Polar HRM/Bike Computer (That's going back tomorrow)

Good enough? Not quite, since the etape is about 700m more climbing, which will add (for me) more than the 23 minutes we were inside the 10 hours.

BUT ETAPES HAVE:
Better Roads
Group Riding Effects
Organised feeds to reduce stopping

AND ETAPES DON'T HAVE:
Howling 24mph NE winds (hopefully)
Flooded Roads (hopefully)
14 individual sets of gradients of >13%

Confidence is building. Next milestone will be the Cheshire Cat Sportive, and hopefully a great improvement on last year's elapsed effort of 8:04.

But it's a quieter 2 weeks until then, especially since I have already surpassed February's Mileage for March. I'm off to do the stretches my aching legs demand......