Wet Weekend Weather
Total Rides: 3
Total Distance: 180 km
Total Ascent: 1,976 m
Well, the plan had been to do a decent Saturday ride leading into a longer ride on Sunday – however the weather had other ideas! On Saturday Sydney was sitting below the remnants of the recent QLD tropical storm and as you can see from the weather chart below things were a little wet out there. Fortunately we’re still at the stage where the training rides are optional … and on SaturdayI had no hesitation in taking the option of going back to sleep. On these occasions there is a little bit of guilt (someone may actually be riding), a bit of frustration (we do need to get enough rides in to ease the pain on Tour) … but to be honest the main feeling is pleasure as you crawl back into a warm bed!
By early Sunday morning things were a bit better and I managed to squeeze in a solid 80km’s with just over a 1,000m’s of climbing. Not bad considering I was riding solo. As well as the camaraderie, the big advantage of riding in a group is that it’s a lot less effort. In the bunch we all take our turns doing the hard yards on the front, but at the back of your mind you know that fairly soon you’ll be back in the bunch and able to take a ‘break’.
During the rides nutrition and hydration are both vital for us to be able to sustain the effort required to make it to the finish. Riders regularly snack on bars and gels to replenish the calories burnt during the rides, and generally we’ll stop for breakfast towards the end of a ride to begin the recovery process. This is an occasion to top up on the cyclist’s favourite fuel – coffee, and to get some carb’s and sugar into the system. As you can see below I managed to tick all these boxes on Sunday!
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- Sydney’s under there somewhere!
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- Bike riding fuel …
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