Busy Days. As I commented in a recent post on The MAMILity Chronicles, it’s been rather hectic round here of late and a busy schedule that included, amongst other things, changing job hasn’t afforded me any time to put fingers to keyboard and write any blog posts. Although that’s been unavoidable, I have nevertheless felt rather guilty about it as the blog’s languished for the past few weeks. Having headed out early this morning to complete my cycle training for the day, I’m now relaxing with a rather nice lunchtime G&T in hand – not the obvious choice for rehydration and recovery but a very fine choice for a warm, sunny, lazy afternoon! Time to wake MAMILity up from its slumber and write a blog post. The last time I posted here we’d just returned from a much-needed, and much-appreciated, break in the Lake District and having called in at my folks home in Manchester on the way back I’d recalled the occasion when my dad first taught me to ride a bike.
Cheers! Links Like this: Like Loading... Magnifique Magnificat. Last weekend was, perhaps, the most special weekend of my sportive calendar this year. All of the events I’ve taken part in to date have been solo affairs. Of course, there’s the camaraderie of your fellow cyclists as you pound your way round the route but so far I’ve not set out to complete any of the events with friends or family cycling alongside. To be honest, I’m the only one of my friends who’s nutty enough to want to slog round anything from 50 to 100 miles of route on a bike for fun … and to pay for the privilege! That all changed this weekend as my long-suffering wife, who’s played the part of my support team admirably all year, accompanying me to the start of each event, took part in her first ever sportive.
That’s her, on the right of the picture at the top of this blog post. We carefully selected the 26 mile Fun Ride that was one of the four distances offered by the Wiggle Magnificat Sportive. My role for the event was to play the part of my wife’s domestique. Links Like this: Wight Water. On Sunday, I headed out for the latest, and toughest, of my year’s cycling challenges, the Wiggle Wight Ferry Sportive. This time, amongst the advice that our conduct on the roads should reflect the fact that this was to be a sportive, not a closed-road race, there was also an exhortation that to get the most out of it the participants should treat the event as something of an adventure.
After all, there can’t be too many cycling events that involve boats as well as bikes! I say “boats”, but what I really mean is “boat”, singular, as the event involved a ferry-hop from Lymington, on the mainland, across the Solent to Yarmouth, on the Isle of Wight in the English Channel, and then back, later in the day, having completed a lap of the island. My first challenge, though, was to get up at the frighteningly early time of 4:40 a.m. so we could drive to the race HQ, at the New Forest showground, in time for me to start at around the 7:00 a.m. mark.
Links Like this: Like Loading... Ruling the Roads. If you’ve read my last two blog posts (and thank you for the interest, if you have) then you’ll know that last weekend saw me back in my home city of Manchester, in the North West of England, taking part in the second annual Great Manchester Cycle. The event is a closed-road sportive with the start, finish line and lapping point (for those doing more than one lap) at the Etihad campus that accommodates the Manchester Velodrome and the City of Manchester Stadium, home to Manchester City football club (MCFC).
The velodrome, home to the UK’s National Cycling Centre and British Cycling, the national governing body for the sport here in the UK, was opened in 1994 and hosted the track cycling events at the 2002 Commonwealth Games. I was living in the South of England at the time but I still remember how proud I felt of my home city as I watched the coverage of the games on TV. My ever-patient support crew, looking after my bike at a deserted Etihad Campus Links Like this: Like Loading... A Belle Journée in Bournemouth. Sunday saw the latest in my 2013 calendar of Spring, Summer and Autumn sportives, the Wiggle Bournemouth Sportive. My checklists and routine of packing and getting up at the crack of dawn to pack the car and drive to the event is well-established and I’ve blogged about it before so I won’t bore you with the details here. Suffice it to say that I arrived at the sportive headquarters at about 8:30 a.m. on what was promising to be a warm, sunny and thoroughly lovely English summer day.
The event HQ was at “Chapel Gate” next to Bournemouth airport, so the sights and sounds of commercial airliners taking off and landing on the nearby runway formed the backdrop to the start and finish of the race. As a young boy, I always loved visiting the International Airport in Manchester, not far from my parents’ home, and I’ve always had a sense of excitement and adventure about planes. The route, as captured by my Garmin Edge 500 and displayed using the BikeHike web site Links Like this: Like Loading... A Beast of a Jurassic Beast. Sunday saw me take part in my third sportive of the year, the Wiggle Super Series “Jurassic Beast”. I’m assuming (though I’ve not asked) that the event gets its name from the World Heritage site, the “Jurassic Coast”, that runs along the Dorset and East Devon coastline, as the route of the sportive was on the Isle of Purbeck in Dorset, with the beautiful Purbeck Downs and surrounding countryside forming the backdrop for 2,000 sweaty, huffing and puffing cyclists toiling round the 62 mile route up and down the Downs and along the seafront.
In spite of the name, the Isle of Purbeck isn’t, in fact, an island. It’s a peninsula sticking out into the English Channel, as the route map, below, shows: The 62 mile “Standard” route around the Isle of Purbeck and the Purbeck Downs I’ve described my event preparations before, when blogging about the “New Forest Spring Sportive”, and this was no different. The event organizers did have some fun with the hills and the official signage, though. Links. New Forest Spring Sportive. 5:20 a.m. and the insistent jingling from my mobile on the other side of the room announced the time to get up and get ready for the next sportive in my calendar, the Wiggle New Forest Spring Sportive. I’d already packed my kit bag and prepared the bike for the trip down to the event, starting and finishing at the New Forest Showground near Lyndhurst, so it was just a matter of having a wash, putting on my cycling kit, packing the car and heading out.
The weather forecast in the days running up to the event had been less than encouraging but when I took the disassembled bike and my wheel bags out to the car it was a bright, sunny morning, even if the temperature was a little cool – it was 6 a.m., after all. Our route to the start took us South through the Oxfordshire countryside and the good weather continued until we reached Newbury when the sun suddenly vanished and the sky became overcast. By the time we crossed the county boundary into Hampshire, it was reasonably foggy. Links. 2013 Mad March Hare. Last weekend saw me finish my first ever Sportive, the 2013 Mad March Hare, a significant event in any enthusiastic cyclist’s cycling career.
As a former runner, I’ve always been nervous before events whether they’ve been road races for myself or running on track for my local running club, irrespective of how well I know my training’s gone. In general, this isn’t a bad thing – stops me getting complacent – and my first Sportive was no exception. I’ve always done my best to maintain good fitness and a good training base, through the local gym and my love of RPM classes. I’d worked my way through the British Cycling Sportive training plans. I felt I’d built up good fitness for the event and could see the effect of that in my performance on the bike. This year’s route was 75 miles, or thereabouts, with a total of just over 4,100 feet of climb and that ominous “bump” right in the middle.
The alarm was set for 5 a.m. and when I woke and got up I found the nerves had mostly gone. Staying On Track. It’s been a long time since I last wrote a diary entry or a blog entry on MAMILity. Looking back, the last occasion was shortly after the end of last year’s sportive season, just as the weather was beginning to close in and I was moving to predominantly indoor training for the winter months.
On the whole, it’s been a quiet time since then with relatively little to report, punctuated only by my discovery of the Sufferfest training videos and my first tentative steps into the world of training with a power meter. Hopefully, I’ll be able to blog about my experiences with both sometime soon. As the days have started to lengthen, though, and with the first sportive of the year, the Mad March Hare, only a few days away, the vexed question of navigation round the route has been occupying my thoughts.
One solution I’m investigating is use of a route mapping app on my iPhone and I started my search for a suitable solution with Bike Hub. Links Like this: Like Loading...