Great write up Martin. And very kind to me bearing in mind my little Garmin 'error'.Yesterday was a mass ride of all the Cyclechat Turbo riders. Well that was the plan but at 9.30 a.m. @Del C rolled in to the car park of Ryka’s café to join me and Tommy to form the depleted group of riders.
We had our cups of tea and coffee and then set off. I had said I wanted to have a proper go at Box Hill to see what time I could set. Unfortunately, Box Hill started about 300 yards from Ryka’s so we were far from warmed up. I jumped to the front and set a pace but fairly quickly Tommy came past and set the pace the rest of the way up and I sat in his wheel.
It wasn’t very obvious where the segment ended so we kind of wound it down slowly. The segment hadn’t come up on my Garmin so it wasn’t until I got home that I could see the results. I’d managed a 7:09 which puts me second in my local club leaderboard. More importantly it seems I lead the Cyclechat Leaderboard as well. Tommy’s time doesn’t seem to show for some reason, so I’m not sure how that will pan out. In any event I’m sure one (or more) of you guys will go get the title soon 😊
The task completed, we settled into the ride which unsurprisingly was pretty lumpy as you can see from the profile below. The weather was kind to us staying dry all day. It wasn’t over warm but I took my arm warmers off after a couple of hours. I think Tommy had gone through hours of mental torment deciding between a long sleeve jersey or arm warmers. He chose the jersey in case you wondered.
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We stopped for lunch at a pleasant cafe in Shere after 36 hilly miles, having done 5 significant climbs including Coldharbour Lane, Leith Hill and White Down. (That made 4 of Simon Warren's 100 Greatest Climbs if anyone follows these). Lunch was good and we had a good old chit chat.
I rarely stop when I ride on my own so the post-lunch aching legs was a bit of a shock - but it soon wore off as we ascended yet another hill. After around another 15 miles Del shouted "take the next right" and we turned into a rather agricultural looking lane. It ramped up and the surface slowly deteriorated. It then got worse, and steeper, and worse until I hit a point where I looked ahead and thought there is no way I can get up that without the tyres on my SystemSix (not really a MTB or CX bike) sliding out and I'd crash. I got off and turned around to see Tommy and Del doing the same. After a discussion we decided to carry on up rather than attempt the descent. It was a slow trudge to the top and Del was worried we were going to send him the bill for our new cleats The pic doesn't do it justice, it was very rough and very steep.
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We reached the top and it was in completely the wrong place to get back to the planned route. I think it was at the top of Newlands Common.
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We agreed to miss a portion of the route out and headed off laughing at our unplanned detour and of course headed off for another steep hill.
Fairly soon our foreshortened ride arrived back at Ryka's and we agreed we'd had a great ride and we didn't need to tack on any more miles. We had a last cuppa and reminisced over our various overseas mountain climb trips and all realised how much we missed them this year.
It was a good day all round, nice to meet Del and re-meet Tommy. Hopefully we'll do another one soon and get a few more of us together
Good to meet up with you and Tommy. Agree that we should try and set another of these rides up.