THE BIG 200!

The BIG 200 is 200 miles of cycling in 1 week. I chose 200 miles for no other reason than it was a nice round number and after my efforts earlier in the week I needed a ride of close to 60 miles today to reach the target. I had agreed to ride with Sags and there was an outside chance that Big Nige might also come along. Unfortunately (but maybe sensibly) Big Nige didn't show. Sags was again riding his TT bike and I just knew there was some pain ahead. But how much?

It was cool when we set off but the sun was soon shining although there was a fairly strong breeze blowing. Sags was most definitely up for a hard ride today and we mixed some Tempo efforts with more sensible steady state riding. After 50km we came to a loop that Sags had planned to ride around doing tempo efforts for a couple of laps. We set off on lap 1 and he set a fair old pace - so fast was he going that I was dropped after about 2km! However, for lap 2 I had a cunning plan. The lap starts with a twisty descent and I had noticed that Sags was a bit cautious through this part of the course. So on lap 2 I set off down this hill like a startled rabbit and kept the pace high as the road flattened out at the bottom. I kept expecting Sags to cruise past but where was? Keeping the pace high was now hurting - where was Sags? It turns out that Sags had decided to do a steady even paced effort and so had made no attempt to stay with me at the beginning. He passed me after about 3km and kept the pace high. Me? I crashed and burned spectacularly as the road went uphill and watched Sags disappear into the distance.

Unsurprisingly I felt those efforts for the rest of the ride but we were now on the homeward leg. Sags, however, continued to see every uphill as a challenge and consequently I saw a lot of him disappearing into the distance! I made it home though, and clocked up 100.19km in a few seconds under 3.5 hours, making a total bike mileage for the week of 203.98 miles. Result!

And if anyone is in any doubt, Sags is looking awesome on the bike.

So, a good week of training and some good motivation to take forward into next week. The turbo sessions will be a little harder this week but still not to the level of last year. Small steps, one at a time.

Train smart folks!