Today brought the annual riding of the ITU World Triathlon Leeds bike course - the big event is next weekend and I know a few lads who are doing it and like to do a sighting run before the race itself.
The forecasts were all over the place for today - yr.no said non-stop rain from 9am, while the BBC and the Met Office both said overcast and dry but humid.
It was wall to wall sunshine first thing and it stayed like that all morning...
So, on the Pro Carbon (well, these were serious athletes I'd be out with
) and with plenty of time to get to Roundhay Park for the 9am meet I decided to get a few miles under the wheels and headed out in a loop via Shadwell and Slaid Hill, then down Roundhay Park Lane, timing the traffic lights at the Ring Road perfectly to accelerate up Park Lane and the long way round into the park itself via Princes Ave and Park Ave.
They were already there getting sorted and with 10k already under my belt we set off through the park to The Mansion where the bike course starts.
Street Lane across Harrogate Road, then a left onto Scott Hall Road and down the hill towards Leeds. We got a decent speed up, but hit a set of traffic lights at red which brought things to a temporary halt, then on again and around the roundabout (like you do) at Stainbeck Lane to climb back up to Street Lane, more red lights and left again. On to the unnecessarily complicated junction, round the poorly surfaced roundabout and onto Stonegate Road for 1.5 miles of descending through Meanwood, unfortunately hitting more red lights halfway down
Another set of red lights at the Grove Road junction where it was left for the dip and then climb up to the Otley Road junction, where I was quite pleased to set the fastest speed past the "Your Speed Is..." sign (24mph
) the route turns back on itself.
Back down the hill and getting ready for the other "Your Speed Is..." sign when a Skoda driver pulled out of a side street (borderline) and then speed checked me (deliberate) all the way down the hill, before accelerating away.
.
Karma dictated he was stopped at the traffic lights at the Meanwood Road junction, where he struggled like anyones business to get the car in gear as the lights changed...
All the earlier down now had to be paid for with 1.5 miles of climbing back up to Street Lane, which had me thinking that the lower gearing on the Giant might have been nice in the humidity, but then it was back to the Park with just a few undulations and most of the last mile being downhill.
Tim was leading and turned a junction too early, so I was first back as the other two followed him as I shouted after them
The triathlon does two laps of this route, so after a bit of minor fettling to one of the bikes we were off again.
I won't type all that in again, but we had the same issues with red lights at all but one set, although I did manage to improve my speed past the sign on the second outbound attempt (29mph
), but not on the return one (parked cars...).
Straight down to the car park after the second lap, where after getting everyone sorted it was ice creams all round!
I then left to ride up home, pausing for a couple of pics on the way:
Down Wetherby Road to Elmete Lane, then up the sharp little hill for the long descent down the other side, over Wetherby Road onto the Wyke Beck Way Cycleway for the tarmac section to North Parkway and the long climb up the hill to Seacroft. Onto the CSH extension (i.e. shared path) under the Ring Road / York Road roundabout and local roads down to home.
33.0 miles (53.1km) in
2h 31m at an average of
13.3mph with
1,870ft climbed and an average temperature of 17.5°C although it felt a lot warmer in the sun.
Really hard work at times and I had to push myself in places but glad to have dug in and done it. Goodness knows what the humidity was through, but we all really felt it today.
Despite being on fairly busy roads, virtually all the motorists played the game and at least the lads doing the actual event next week on closed roads won't have to worry about all those blooming red lights!
That said, there are a couple of sections of the route where the road surface is awful, so they'll need to keep an eye on that.
It's also another point for the Half Century Challenge - back to back with yesterdays ride which I'm happy with and I even managed to squeeze in a couple of PB's
To end, a rather odd looking map (the ITU course is pretty much everything west of 'Tropical World', which we did twice):
and dropped an apple off to my wee equine pal (braved the rough ground on my roadie tyres) 
.
Late night gigging meant a lie-in which meant I didn't have enough time to cycle over to see my folks so the ZRX it was. Certainly got my average speed up, though!
