The forecast for the weekend was not great. Saturday morning looked like the only real opportunity to put in some kilometers in anything other than wet conditions. I made an executive decision I would put in a short hard ride on Saturday and go and take the Kona out to play in the mud on Sunday. It seemed everyone else was busy on Saturday. I would be going alone.
Except that I wouldn’t. I had planned a ride that would have a lot of climb, some of it steep, ramping to 20+% and including one ot the longest in this small hilly country.
Now I live in a valley so it is a climb to begin and that rather set the scene for the day. It was a day with few breaks everybody climbing at their own pace and then taking their turns on the front.
And hilly it was.
As ever in these group rides my aging legs were not entirely happy during the first of the climbs and I spent a fair amount of time spinning the Pickenflick’s little gears and watching people disappear up the road. It wasn’t that easy hanging on when the pace line formed either. The Pickenflick runs a super compact chainset with the little cog on the chainset being 28 and 30 out back, but a 42 -11 combo for the flats and downhills.
The Pickenflick is a wonderful thing but it does have it’s limitations. It also weighs in heavy with its 29er wheels and discs.
When we got back to my house in a little under 2 hours 48km and just over 800m ascent on the clock one of our group was not happy. “I don’t like getting the bike out for less than 50km”. So I offered the possibility of another loop of around 10-12km and another 150m. So a select group of 5 set off to keep our friend happy. We ended with just over 60km and 937m ascent.
The final route can be found here
What was most pleasing was that one of the group was a Luxembourger who rode regularly admitted to “Never having been here before in my life” and saying after checking the data from strava later “...and I learned that the was a place as high as 408m in the middle of our country”.
Another of the riders while climbing hard up to the 408m informed me that it “was beautiful”. Which came as a bit of a shock to me because I was struggling so much I had not lifted my eyes from my stem and the square meter of tarmac in front of it, but when I did he was right. Later that afternoon with a beer in my hand and Strade Bianche on the TV I checked through Strava. Plenty of new PR’s and one of our group making it into the top 5 of a descent...but I led him down, where was my medal? My gps had messed up a bit at the start of the downhill. Damn! Later still after a ticket had been put into the Strava helpdesk I got a nice email to say they had resolved it. Nice one Strava...kudos to you!
I guess being a bit heavy, riding a heavy weight bike with disc brakes and a misspent youth scraping footrests of motorcycles round the back roads of Scotland does have some benefits. Having people to chase and to sit behind also helps a lot when looking for medals it seems.
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