Ice Not Nice

There was some debate as to the likely condition of the roads, after a night of rain and temperatures close to zero, but the conclusion was they were probably fine.

Wrong!

We were 5 miles along our journey to Dunstable and had just headed off down Gaddesdon Lane when we caught up with the youth group who had taken a spill on some nasty and very unexpected black ice.  The Sociables had been flagged down and were able to stop well short of the ice, but another group coming the other way also took a tumble on the ice.

After a brief conflab, it was agreed that we double back and head to Vanstone garden centre and stick to main roads.

A different type of ride sticking to the main roads, but we were a large group so it felt quite safe.

A huge long hill out of Welwyn to Codicote and I drop back a long way.  If it hadn't been for the teabreak at the garden centre we would have lost the group.

The tea break felt all too brief as we had arrived late, and now the temperatures had warmed up we were able to return along the country lanes.  I really do love the lanes, the countryside is so lovely it makes riding a real pleasure.

Unfortunately, we took a wrong turn, which of course we only realised after we had flown down a huge hill, so now the rest of the group were long gone.  Even without the wrong turning I know that I would have been dropped early.

I desperately need to work on my speed and I have now found that Westminster Lodge runs loads of spinning classes, so I am back in training!  The great thing about the classes in the UK is that they are all in English and I understand all the instructions.  I suspect I didn't get a lot of the benefit when I went to spinning classes in Montreal, as they were all in French and I never had much of a clue what was happening!

Writing about spinning reminds me of my favourite short story about a spin class........

 

Apps aplenty apps galore

 

This week I discovered that the Strava cycling app publishes a summary of your cycling year.  I've saved my story to youtube (see link below) so that I can compare my 2015 year with my 2014 year and hope to see some improvements! 

 

One statistic that amazed me on my app is that I have one real Queen of the Mountains (QOM) award, not just a fake 1st Jan QOM 2015 award.

 

I investigated this a little further and found that the hill where I achieved my award is an obscure little street in a town, where undoubtedly no other woman with strava has ever ridden.  I must keep this location very secret to protect my title!

 

There are roughly 180 women with strava who ride in my local area, and I am pretty regularly in the bottom 3 on any segment that I choose to look at it.  I am not downhearted by this, I just see that there is plenty of scope to achieve significant gains!

 

 

 

I have also discovered a new app called Myfitness pal.  What an eye opener this is.  I have said that I want to lose 1/2lb per week so I am given a 1500 calorie allowance.  Any exercise I do increases the calorie allowance, and any food I eat is deducted from it.  At the end of the day I am over or under my allowance and the app tells me what I am likely to weigh in 5 weeks if I continue eating as I have that day.  There are some days when I don't like the app very much! However, it is certainly influencing my food choices.

 

 

 

On Sunday morning instead of heading out with the Verulam crowd, I joined the Verulam ladies training session.  We did some cycling exercises in a school playground (flashbacks to cycling proficiency lessons) and then did a very brief ride to a coffee shop in Wheathamstead.

 

There was a very fine piece of chocolate fudge cake with my name on it in the coffee shop.  However, a quick check of my strava app and myfitness pal app and I calculated that the cake, which was around 700 calories (who knew they were this much!) would have been more calories than I was burning up on the brief ride.

 

Here is a picture of the unrequited chocolate cake. 

 

 

Instead I settled for a 300 calorie teacake.  Which was still in fact quite a surprising amount of calories.

 

I was quite disappointed with the number of kilometres that I did today (16.5km), although the training will undoubtedly come in handy, especially the bonus puncture repair training

 

 

 

 

When I met up with Stuart again I checked his Strava stats.  76.5km ridden and given the speed he was cycling at, 2,100 calories burned.  I was so jealous, I could have eaten the whole damn cake!

 

 

OMG I'm QOM

It's New Year's Day and we have been looking forward to our first ride of 2015 for quite a while.  Whatever the weather we are determined to head out.  Fortunately, it's not too bad, but the departure is considerably delayed due to the previous night's festivities. (A trip to London to see the fireworks, which we can now highly recommend!)

Our route takes us past the Harpenden annual duck race, and it was fun to see that the leaders of the race were the real ducks!

We had heard that Emily's tea shop in Whitwell would be open on New Year's Day, and as this is a favourite haunt of cyclists we make this our destination.

This is only a short ride  (we actually only did 23km), but I still feel that a snack has been earned!  I have a theory that all calories consumed on a cycle ride are automatically burned off during the ride, I suspect this may not have been the case here. 

We spend a very pleasant hour in the cafe devouring a couple of cycle magazines.  In one of the magazines is a huge listing of all the sportif rides around the country that will be taking place over the year.  These are rides of around 50 -150 km long, on a prescribed route, often with marshals and feed stations in picturesque parts of the country.  They will be an excellent way to build up to being able to do the London Ride 100 (miles) in August.  That is if we manage to get places in the lottery. 

However, first I have to concentrate on getting my speed up for the Verulam club rides on Sundays, and I don't think that my 3 short bike rides between Christmas and New Year will have helped much, and there may well be a few extra pounds being carried on the bicycle at the moment. I'm a little nervous for the next ride!

The ride out to Emily's was a gentle uphill with a couple of really fast steep descents, which means the return journey now has 2 nasty climbs.  Although I have done them both before they seem particularly challenging today.  There are a couple of moments when I start to think I may have to push the bike up the hill, but this is when it is best to switch the brain off and just focus on keeping the legs going round.  I get to top without getting off, so am very chuffed.

But, not as chuffed as when I look at my strava report for the ride.  I have been awarded 3 Queen of the Mountain (QOM) awards.  I'm amazed, stunned, but then the penny drops.  It's Jan 1st and my award is QOM 2015.  I'm the first female cyclist to cycle those hills this year.  Not quite as impressive as I thought!  

Note to self, plan a big ride next Jan 1st and log as many QOMs as possible for 2016!