Will be on holiday for the second half of this month, so wanted to get a long ride in as early as possible before I run out of weekends to do it in (especially as it looks like I've already lost one upcoming Saturday to overtime). Also wanted to get my first climb of Aston Hill of the year done - this has been my stand in for Leith Hill when I'm training for RideLondon, so I anticipate doing that a couple of times more between now and July.
After I'd done the climb, I headed down to Chesham and then just started to meander around the lanes of the Chilterns adding on miles wherever I saw an opportunity. Very quickly I realised I'd done easily enough for my 50k, so started looking further afield - "if I turn here, that'll get me to 40 miles; add on a loop here will put me nearly at 50, then another 5 will take me past my Eddington target, after that I only need to find another 7 to get my 100k done..."
Of course, these things don't go quite to plan - just as I started to approach 40 miles, my legs started to seize up (and very suddenly too - usually this is a slow process for me). At that point I worked out that the direct route home from where I was would give me just over 46 miles and as it would be mainly downhill, I'd see how they felt once I got back in to Aylesbury. As it turned out, they were good enough to add on an extra 3.5 miles (but no more!) that got me to an imperial half. Although I did get a scare when a kid ran out into the road right in front of me just after I got back in to town - if I'd have been doing just a few mph more at the time, my brakes might not have brought me to a stop without one or both of us taking an impact. Luckily, the reactions were sharp enough that no damage was done.
@gavgav
until then.
