Winter training
I mentioned in an earlier post that I’ve booked a week’s cycling holiday in Albania at the end of May. Since then I’ve also signed up for the BikeOxford 80-mile sportive which is on the Sunday before a friend and I leave for Albania. This means I’ve got to start getting fit again after being rather too indolent over the autumn and into Christmas.
So I’ve been out a few times on my No. 2 bike, fitted with mudguards and lights. Two flat rides, then yesterday a 20-miler out to Brill and back. It’s a route I’ve done plenty of times before; it has five small but quite sharp hills including Brill Hill which was ‘featured’ on a stage of the Tour of Britain last year. It was cold – about 5°C – dark and rainy at times and the roads were very wet!
The ride took me 20 minutes longer than it does when I was doing it last summer on my No. 1 bike and according to my heart-rate monitor I burned 33% more calories. This could be due to
- being in the “Too Fat To Climb” club. I need to lose at least 7 pounds to get back to my optimum weight;
- my No. 2 bike being heavier than my No. 1 bike and not having such a range of gears;
- burning more calories to keep warm;
or most likely a combination of all the above. I need to get more winter miles in. Once the days are a bit longer and the weather’s better I’ll be back on the No. 1 bike. I’m keen to try out the new 25mm Continental GP4000 tyres I’ve just fitted on it as a New Year gift.
Comments
Winter training — No Comments
HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>