Fantastic British weather

Two rides down this weekend, both of which started in the pouring rain, although it was somewhat milder than it has been of late (that's not difficult though!).  I was actually quite proud of myself that I managed to go out in the rain - usually I would have just gone on the rollers for half an hour, but I've got to get used to going out in all weathers - being a fair weather cyclist isn't going to get me from John O'Groats to Land's End!

I had been tired all week (not helped by having to wait for more than an hour at the hospital on Monday afternoon) and I definitely felt it yesterday - my legs felt really heavy and I did find it a bit difficult.  I punctured on the way out - we'd only been out about 10 minutes and it was still raining heavily - Fred wasn't too impressed!  We had intended to go out for 2 hours, but we were going to watch the National Madison Championships, which started at 1.30pm, so we had to curtail the ride so that we could get there in time.

Although my legs felt like lead, I never really felt tired, but today it was slightly different - I did actually feel really knackered at one point.  Hmm.  Not good. 

Today, Yvonne joined us on our ride - it was her first outing with clipless pedals and it proved to be a bit problematic at first.  She eventually got to grips with it though and we managed to do 24 miles (double what we did last Sunday) at a faster average speed, which was good.  I don't think we'll have any problems with the self-certifying that we have to do at the end of January - a condition of us doing the Ride Across Britain is that we have to be able to do 40 miles at an average speed of 11 mph by the 1 February 2011.  Hopefully, if the weather is good next weekend we'll be able to do the 40 miles then...

I've realised this week that I'm not well enough to get back on the track yet - that's something for the future, I think, which is frustrating because I really do want to ride at the Velodrome again, it's obviously not something I can do just yet.  Ironic then, that the press release announcing the new VC St Raphael women's team appeared on the British Cycling website in the 'Track' section: VC St Raphael Press Release

Patience is a virtue, something which it appears that I am going to have to develop.  Time to concentrate on the future, not the present, maybe?