The dry weather, light winds and the promise of beer at our new watering hole (Robert De Mortain) brought out a good turnout of eleven riders. It was good to see Jon S after many months. Jon has not been totally idle over that time but now needs to step up the mileage if he is to tackle his planned ultra endurance challenges in the summer.
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| Good to see John S again. |
Despite the light winds it was still cold, around four degrees. Everyone agreed that we have all had enough of the cold and are now longing for the warmth of spring. Dan was particularly fed up with the low temperatures and admitted to ' not feeling the love' for any-more winter cycling.
Myself , Ricky and Ivan set off two minutes before the others. After many attempts to find the perfect head start, two minutes does seem to be just right as the others caught us up about halfway before the reserve.
Despite saying he was going to take it easy, Patrick and most of the others disappeared into the distance on the Broad-Oak drag working together and 'practising through and off'. Dan got a little ahead of myself and Ricky and the gap remained constant all the way to Broad-Oak with Derek some way behind us.
As we set off down the steep hill towards Brede the zip on my windproof came undone but it was too dangerous to try to fix it on the move so I felt like a cold turkey by the time we swept left towards Doleham and I was finally able to stop and zip it up (instant warmth).
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| Flats or clipless? You decide. |
Dan had no energy left by the foothills of Stonestile and even hanging onto myself and Ricky's wheels proved too much for him. Ricky, on the other hand was bursting with energy and climbed Stonestile significantly faster than last time and easily dropped me about half way up the climb. It was then that I noticed he was only riding flat pedals. We all tried to persuade him of the benefits of going clipless but I don't think he was convinced (I suppose if flat pedals are good enough for endurance/mtb heroine Jill Homer they are good enough for us? This is what Jill thinks about flats vs clipless
http://www.jilloutside.com/2008/06/my-clipless-platform.html )
We had a record breaking turnout for our post ride bevies. Peter baker was in a particularly ebullient mood and a fine time was had by all . I was glad that I had purchased yet another long lock to leave there on a permanent basis as it was only just sufficient to get round all the bikes.Here's looking forward to the next Friday night outing.
Steve C
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