Riding on your own can become a bit boring, if the weather is nice it's ok, but during the winter, which lasts somewhere upto June in the UK, it can be quite demotivating to go out on your own, therefore I've been trying to find a club. I knew there was a club in Ravensthorpe, as I've seen some of their riders last year, so I got in touch and voila, today was my first ride with the Ravensthorpe Cycling Club. Peeking out the window early this morning wasn't too promising but Monica got me into going anyway, it wasn't raining but there were a lot of clouds and it definitely had rain. Let me tell you, I hate leaving for a ride in the rain, I don't mind too much if it starts raining somewhere along and you can go home, but not getting soaked from the beginning. But anyway, it stayed dry for almost the whole ride. We met at 9am in Mirfield and went out for a ride to Bolton Bridge (for a quick stop with a tea and scone) via Keighly, coming back via the other side of Bradford, all in all just under 100km - quite a ride. But it really helps cycling with a bunch of other guys, you talk a bit and without noticing you have 30km under the wheels. The last 20 km went better then expected as this is by far the furthest ride I've done so far this year. Average speed was just under 24km/h with a total ascend of around 11oo mtr. I had a good day and will certainly continue with these Sunday rides, they should prepare me for the 175km Etappe Du Dales! However, I don't advise anyone to go out cycling in Bradford on Sunday noon time, not a good idea - too many cardrivers think passing very close to cyclists is a sport - well it isn't!
I promissed to tell a bit about the Garmin. I've bought the Edge705 a little while ago and i have to say I'm quite pleased with this little toy. It's a GPS combined with all the data you want, like altitude, grade ascend/descend, hart rate, calories used (a bit desceptive I think) etc etc. You can upload all the information to Garmin Training Centre, in which you then can compare the data with other rides. You can even view the ride in Google Earth, that's neat. But....like with all these toys, you have to be a bit nerdish I think to really enjoy it - unless you are a professional rider and actually need all that data to improve, for me it's just fun having access to the data, although I do use the heart rate to ensure I'm not burning out too fast. It's also great for not getting lost, it replaces those little notes on which I sometimes scribble my route - they get sweaty and unreadable after a couple of hours. It's certainly one of my better buys lately, together with my legwarmers.
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