The Longest Day

Sunday 18 April was my first proper event of 2010, the New Forest Spring Sportive over an advertised distance of 83.3 miles (134.1km) but more on that later. But I almost didn't make it. The night before we were round a friend's house for dinner, and they own a rather solidly built and excitable Labrador. I'd only been in the house about 10 minutes when I was taken out by said Labrador, as he ran into me, hitting my right leg slightly behind the right knee, pushing the joint inwards in a direction knee joints don't normally go. I have a history of knee problems and had an ACL repair some years ago and the joint did not seat itself properly straight away, but after a couple of minutes of manipulation it dropped back into place and all was well, if a little sore. Despite that, we had a very pleasant evening and I was very restrained on the alcohol front as I knew I had an early start, but it was still midnight before I got to bed.

0530 Sunday and the alarm goes. Up, walk dog, hearty breakfast of orange juice, 2 weetabix, cheese omelette and coffee and I'm off to the New Forest. I get there early and sort myself out and I'm ready to go. I meet Kelda and Adrian and the first thing we talk about is the weather - it is freezing! The car computer was showing just 1 degree C and although the forecast was for 16-17 degrees later in the day it's a tough decision as to whether you dress for the early morning cold or the later day warmth. I chose to be comfortable later on so suffered for the first half hour or so with freezing fingers etc. We met up with my other cycling buddies, who all appeared to have some new bling, although the winner by far was the Cervelo S3 with Dura-Ace kit weighing in at a total of 6.3kg (13.86 pounds)!

After a bit of faffing around we got going at 0815, and as expected the team set off at a fair old lick and in our eagerness missed the second turn of the route! It was quickly apparent that Kelda wasn't going to keep up and after about 15km or so she dropped off the back to ride at a more sensible pace whilst our small group kept the hammer down. The New Forest is a beautiful area to cycle in and as well as the local scenery and hills there is the local wildlife to contend with as well, with horses, pigs and goodness knows what else very likely to wander into the road at any moment. Our group had a couple of close encounters with horses that kept us on our toes! And there are hills as well. The route was best described as rolling but it also went up Blissford Hill, it's not long but at 25% it's a bit of a beast. I was overtaken up here by a youth on a MTB spinning like a dervish whilst the roadies struggled - even on a compact it was a grind (I only had a 23 on the back). By this time the sun was shining and it was a glorious day for cycling with a very light breeze. Our group kept meeting other groups to create a much larger group and at times there was probably 25 or 30 in the group. This caused me a couple of problems when sitting towards the rear only to find the group had split and my cycling buddies were in the group off the front. Hey ho, head down and bridge the gap - with HR off the scale! After about 90km the first signs of fatigue were appearing in the group and I spent longer on the front but we kept it all together and I crossed the line with a recorded time of 4 hours 28 minutes to achieve gold standard. Interestingly, the route information said 83.3 miles and gold standard would be sub 4 hours 19 minutes; they must have changed the route somehow and modified the time because I clocked 139km (86.3 miles) and yet was still awarded gold standard. I'm not too fussed about that but what did please me was that I felt strong the whole way and had the energy to push hard right to the very end.

What didn't please me was failing to press the right buttons on my bike computer so have lost all my data for the ride. I strongly suspect it would have told me that I spent nearly the whole ride above 80% of MHR so a good hard ride.

Thanks to the volcano in Iceland and the lack of planes actually flying I had to take my boys back to school in Leeds on Sunday afternoon. By the time I got home it was 0315 on Monday and I was one very tired individual. Fortunately I had a day off today so have relaxed and even enjoyed an ice cream on the beach.

Train smart folks.