Here Comes The Sun

Well, its been a glorious day in Essex today. The sun is out, the sky is blue, its beautiful and so are you, dear Prudence. Whoops sorry, this is a cycling blog isn't it.

I am pleased to say that today has been a most productive day for me. I've used to good weather to enable me to:
a) do some washing
b) cut the grass
c) do some shopping and
d) prepare for a BBQ tonight.

Oh yes, and I went down to Woodham Mortimer in Essex with Drew and Sam to take part in the Whitham Wander Audax event. It was supposed to be around 100km, but with my detour (I blame the route sheet, it said turn left when the organiser meant go straight on). Anyway, I'm pleased to report that we completed 107km in 4 hours 24mins at an average speed of 24.2km/h with 2997 feet of climbing. To put this into understandable units (not of the foreign metric stuff), it was 66.2 MILES at an average speed of 15mph.

The only break in this ride was a quick toilet stop at the control point after 54km. I am pleased to report that my knee appears to have stood up to the event pretty well. I pushed myself to test the knee out to see if it is likely to survive the Police Unity Tour ride. I'm confident that me knee stood up better than I expected although it still is very painful to walk on it, but not to cycle on it.

There was one casualty of the ride today. Poor Sam doing his first audax found the going a bit fast for him. It was not helped by his having to ride in training shoes on cleated pedals. He left his cycling shoes at home.

I must give lots of praise to the organiser for his planning and smooth running on the day. The free food provided at the finish was magnificent. It was more in quantity and quality than most lunches provided at work conferences or training courses.

I rode the event on my touring bike which is the one I will be riding in the USA. The bike was fine, all seemed to work well. So, its going to be packed away now ready for the USA. I need to take off the mudguards, remove the pedals, turn the handlebars etc.

Its been a good evening. Drew & Sam, who did the ride with me came round for a BBQ, a couple of beers and a chance to chew the fat, review today's ride, plot to do a few more audax events as well. We've righted the world, sorted out British Cycling and generally had a good chat.

The night ended well with Drew giving me another £40 ($60) towards my sponsorship target.