Hard Ride!

Yesterday was a tough day! The wind was blowing quite forceful out of the west, exactly the direction we were heading with some of the guys of RCC. Within the club we changed our regime and now split up in a more social ride versus a tough ride (but shorter - because faster..). Four of us went from Mirfield toward Hebden Bridge, over the Moors towards Wycoller, than back again over the Moors towards Oxenthorpe and Queensbury. The part from Hebden Bridge towards Wycoller was tough - there must have been a wind full in our face of over 30 miles/hour - letting us struggle to go even downhill - this was full exposure to nature's elements. Anyway, these experiences make us tough, like real Flandriens.....
Ride statistics: 95 km, 1600 meters ascend, 24 km/h speed - maximum speed 70 km/h on the descend towards Oxenthorpe with the wind in my back.
My climbing is improving quite a bit - I can keep up my speed for quite some time and don't explode until I overdo myself. Just get in the right cadence, and things go well. Maybe I'm doing better because I've lost some weight, now 79 kilo's so I've lost 6 kilo's (a stone) since January. I'd like to loose another 5 kilo's or so, I think my ideal weight is somewhere around 75 - it will certainly help me with climbing.
This week again some travel, but it's reasonable quiet for the next month, so enough time to do some spinning and riding.

Longest ride so far

Today I did my longest ride so far - 140 kilometers through the Yorkshire Dales (Mirfield - Leeds - Poole - Grassington - Skipton - Keighley - Queensburry - Bailiff Bridge - Mirfield). It went quite well, certainly considering the week after my Cape Argus race. But then the weather was absolutely fantastic, the occasional cloud, a bit of wind but mostly quite sunny and around 12C. Perfect weather to ride.
Statistics were 1700 mtr total ascend, 25.8 k/h. There were some interesting climbs in the ride and I feel I'm improving quite a bit with my climbing. It's necessary as well as the Etappe De Dales has around 3000 meters ascend. If I continue however as I'm doing now, I should be able to do the EdD 110 miles in around 8 hours. Otherwise I didn't do too much this week, some turbotraining with the club and a ride to work. Had a check up at the gym at work on Friday, we did a 6 minute increased powerride on the stationairy bike - went up to 250 Watt with 85% MHR without any problems.
The Cape Argus folks added the adjustment table to their site, due to everyone complaining about their finishing times, my 4h18 should be adjusted to around 3h30 under normal circumstances, quite good actually. Maybe I can try again next year and hope for nice weather.

Cape Argus Cycle Tour

This week I have been in South Africa for work purposes and I could use the opportunity to ride the Cape Argus Pick 'n Pay Cycle Tour! This is THE event for cyclists, as it is one of the 10 UCI recognized GOLD standard tours and it has 35,000 cyclists participating!

This Sunday the tour was extremely difficult because of the winds, there was a South Eastern wind blowing with speeds of 60 to 70 km/h, which resulted in over 10,000 cyclists not showing up or not finishing the race. Even directly after the start, coming from under the Civil Center in Cape Town, the winds hit us right in the face and it caused many cyclist to walk or even fall.

However, being used the cycle against the wind along the Dutch polders, I was very brave and stayed on my bike, actually did quite well considering the weather. It was odd though to have to pedal hard on a descend to make any speed! Where I had been flyingwith no effort at all with speeds of around 40km/h the day before, now I was hardly doing 20km/h (and that on a descend!).

According to most of the cyclists at the finish, this was the hardest Cape Argus since history, I don't know about that but it actually was a bit madness.

My time was 4hour17 minutes, with an average speed of 25.6 km (110 km race).