Knowing that the weather is apparently supposed to turn gash tomorrow I wanted to get out today to minimise consecutive days spent stuck inside the house.
I'm apparently still recovering from Sunday's sizeable effort so it had to be a steady one, while I have a plan forming in my head for a longish ride down south so it made sense to do a bit of a recce in that direction. For once I actually planned a route; marking out a 38 mile loop on google maps and memorising the place names as I roughly knew where I was going and couldn't be arsed to acquire and upload a .gpx file..
The first few miles were marred by my HR monitor playing up; which I can't complain about too much as they battery had been running low so I stopped to replace it (causing me to re-start my ride as killing the power also killed the pairing with the GPS unit). It still seemed a bit dicky; possibly due to a lack of moisture on the strap but after giving it a good lick it appeared to start behaving itself
Three of Leonard Cohen's finest albums lined up to set an appropriate pace, I headed out south-west through Cumnor, Eaton, Appleton, Hinton Waldrist and Hatford... cutting the corner off the intersection of a couple of roads by nicking off down a short bridleway. This yielded a lot of wildlife (butterflies, bees, a dragonfly a rabbit and plenty of songbirds, amongst others) but also a lot of bumps.
I continued south past Stanford-in-the-Vale then south-east through West Challow and on to Wantage, where I snapped the bike as watched over by Alfred the Great in the town square, as a homage to eltonfrog's similar image a while ago. My phone really does a sterling job of making everything look cack, but I mustn't grumble as it's probably outlasted your typical smart phone many times over..
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I used this stop to swap my water bottles; the one pictured being an old one pressed into service while my normal ones soak in bleach solution; however in my haste to make this one serviceable I evidently didn't rinse it sufficiently - leaving its contents delicately citrus flavoured thanks to the lemon washing up liquid used
Thankfully I'd taken a 2nd bottle in my rucksack... and not in my 2nd bottle cage as I'm still doing battle with the crappy suppliers over the poor quality of the Topeak ones I bought recently..
I continued east through Wantage and Ardington, West Hendred and Harwell before hanging a left at West Hagbourne; not before I'd stopped for a bit of shade and a picture next to the nice village pond
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This was just after I'd had an odd interaction with a flatbed.. it passing me some miles back and the passenger shouting something at me while leaning out of the window. Given the prevailing attitude of the occupants of such vehicles I thought he was having a go but didn't hear what he said, so just mimed confusion and carried on; the wagon turning off a short time later. A couple of miles down the road it passed me again; blowing the horn this time - but more in a friendly two-stabs kind of way and it gave me enough room so there didn't appear to be any aggression involved. Perhaps he just liked my shorts..
I continued North through Didcot, picking up the bit of NCR5 I recently discovered while down here last time. I followed this through Sutton Courtney and tried to continue on the bridleway out the other side, but it was closed. Thankfully there was an alternative a bit futher up the road and I took this to the outskirts of Abingdon.. looping CW around the ring road to Radley then back into town on NCR5.
Approaching Donny bridge on the tow path the water looked increasingly inviting, so I popped over the bridge to the boathouse where I found the pontoons to be quite sparsely-populated for some reason, so I took the opportunity to dip both ends of myself in the water. Liberating my feet from the tight, sweaty cycle shoes they'd been in for the past 3hrs and plunging them into the water was arguably the best bit of the ride
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I chilled there for a few minutes before drying my feet off as best as possible and continuing on my way. By this point I'd travelled around 43 miles so I minced around town for a bit to push it up to a little over 50.
En-route I passed what's left of (IIRC) the uni's zoology building; lamenting its destruction as I'd come to love its uncompromising brutalist architecture during my early years in the city. This is now all that remains:
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After this I made my way home the long way, for a total of about 52 miles (including those lost due to the HRM issue) and 1070ft at about 13.4mph and 113bpm; about 60% of the ride being in zone 1 and the vast majority of the rest zone 2.
Despite having apparently expended a whole day's worth of energy I wasn't ravenous when I got home (I suspect due to my low carb intake as it makes me much less governed by hunger and have found similar after past rides). After a shower I popped to the shop and upon returning had a dinner of dressed salad, fish fingers with melted cheese, a couple of soft-boiled eggs, chopped up toasted seed loaf and a big dollop of Greek yoghurt; which unsurprisingly went down very well
Today's ride was generally pleasant if very hot (jury's out as to whether I've overcooked my slaphead) and marred by some pretty stupid driving - a couple of needlessly close passes and at least three absolute dickheads who overtook me on blind bends... another sign that things are getting back to normal, then
I also saw a good few other cyclists; including one distinctive older chap in yellow with lots of hair who I passed twice (both times as we were heading in opposite directions) hello if this was you!
Anyway, I think that concludes today's thrilling instalment.. definitely having a day off tomorrow!
