Tell us about your weekend ride

I almost didn't want to write about it.

Some time over a decade ago, me and @philxthomas rode a fixed century from Newcastle to Berwick. I rode a Dave Yates lo-pro, Phil was on a vig. The weather was nice, the day was long. But I genuinely don't remember it being that bad. Is it just that I forgot? Perhaps the folly of youth carried us more than I realised. I remember passing some German cyclo-tourists on their ultra utilitarian hybrid tourers, and them enquiring about our bikes and our planned ride, asking in their heavy accents: "But why are you doing this?!", I don't think we had an answer then, and I'm not sure I have one now either.

...

Time is painfully short at the moment. The drudgery of day to day life, up at 530, work for 630, home for 5, get the youngun on the evenings I have him, rush through dinner and bathtime, get youngun back to his mums for bedtime routine, back home for 8, attempt exercise or try and reduce the ever growing list of household admin, shower and bed. The weekend arrives, youngun for one day, and then one day to get something done. What will the something be? Life just seems like a constant stream of reactive tasks. Got to eat, got to tidy, got to buy food, got to clean up, got to wash clothes, got to go to work. The weeks fly by. Nothing in the calendar to look forward to. But one day a week, I can try and put my name to something.

I've been injured for a while. A strained adductor in my leg that means I can't run or climb. Usually I'd lope off somewhere and flog myself round some mountaintops - be it a fell race or just a long run on my own. Trying to carve meaning into my existence through physical application. I am capable. I can do things. But the injury persists. I do my exercises - squeezing pillows between my knees as I sit on the sofa. They are tiring, difficult, and somewhat effective exercises but they're also galling. How on earth am I ever to meaningfully recover with such pithy rehabilitation? The answer lies in the fact that I don't think I could actually do anything more strenuous than the pillow squeezing. It will take time, patience and persistence. But ultimately, when Monday morning rolls around, I need to have something more to my weekend than just pillow squeezing.

Fortunately, I can still ride a bike. Feet locked into a fixed axis of movement means that hamstrings, quads, glutes and calves can all fire happily without needing the stabilisation support of my retiring adductor. So now what?

I rode my second ever century a few weeks back at the start of June. It was a long day, but with gears and company for half the miles, it was doable. The final 15 or so miles are always going to be gruelling I guess. Three weeks later I did another, this time steeper but perhaps with more confidence. So what next? I'd wanted to ride the Hard Day in January this year. I even got the train down to London from Leeds for a training ride with @Ruserius in November. But life soon fell apart, and any hopes of HDIJ fell by the wayside. So the logical progression presents itself. A geared century, a steeper geared century, then a fixed gear century. Pick a sensible route and surely it shouldn't really be much different? And here begins that tale.

Rides from Leeds are fairly straightforward. Head to the Dales for hills, head to York for the flats. So I picked the latter. There's some lumps to overcome getting out of Leeds, but it's flat as a pancake after Tadcaster really. So the puzzle of route planning begins. No real goal other than a total distance of over 100 miles, and hopefully with minimal climbing. So I dot to dot a route out of Leeds, a detour round Ecup Reservoir, then towards Bramham and the familiar roads to Tadcaster. Plan a convenient stop at the petrol station for calories. Bolton Percy, Appleton Roebuck, Acaster Mablis, cross the Ouse at Nabburn, Escrick, Skipwith, Thorganby, Wheldrake (google cafes and plan a stop here), Elvington, Stamford Bridge (not that one), Haxby (no time to stop at the bakery), Shipton by Benningbrough, Newton on Ouse, Linton on Ouse, Little Ouseburn, Whixley, Cattal, back into Tadcaster, Bramham, Thorner and onto Leeds. It all seems reasonably cohesive. Check the weather. Standard Westerly winds but at an agreeable 5-8mph. Rain? Yes and no. It could be dry, it might not be. Recent forecasts have been as imprecise as they're known to be. Pack a jacket and hope for the best.

Pack the rest of the bag too. Meticulous or just scatterbrained hurrying around. Gather gels, make sure you have tubes, tools, repair kits, discover that the knife in the tubeless repair kit is rusted shut, set it free with some chain lube, bike cleaned last weekend so no maintenance there, charge lights, inflate tyres, change saddle, lay out clothes for the morning, try and pick shorts that won't chafe, top up the little jar of chamois cream, think, think, think, set an ambitious alarm, set an even more ambitious meeting time for dinner with friends, get to bed too late.

Alarm went off at a respectable 7am, but was snoozed until a less respectable 750. The 8am calculated departure floats by. The mental maths pings around my head. Calculating average speeds and allotted stopping times. It's fine. I'm not late I'm just planning on riding faster now. It was an economical schedule to begin with and now I'm setting off 50 minutes late at 850. I'm meeting friends for dinner at 5pm. So I have around 7 hours if I am to be back home by 4pm. Which is an average speed of 17.5mph if I'm allowed an hours break (total). This is absurd but I'm on the road now.

With the detour round the reservoir, there's some lumps for about the first 20 miles. My legs don't really feel that fresh. The spirited hilly 30 miles on the fixed on Friday still knocking around in my quads. But the average speed is on target and the weather is looking nice enough that I'm even worried about sunburn. Stop at the petrol station in Tadcaster for a sandwich eating time trial and water top up. Get the calories in before you need them. Then onto the familiar roads east.

I'm feeling generally alright. My saddle isn't quite as comfortable as I'd like. I notice the big difference that constant peddling and less time out the saddle makes. I'm sitting at the desired 17.5mph, but I am waning a little. Getting to Wheldrake at 45 miles feels like more of a drag than it should. The doubt creeps in a little. But the cafe is nice. Sandwich, coke, coffee, water, ablutions, re-apply chamois, and back on the road. As I'm setting off, the giant grey clouds ahead become apparent. It looks like I'll just manage to skirt round them, but soon enough the approaching cars and tarmac get wetter and wetter. Better stop now to put the jacket on before I'm caught out. And at the 50 mile mark, the jacket went on, and stayed on all day.

The rains come, sometimes spitting, sometimes driving. Morale is generally lowering. The wind seems unpredictable - it doesn't totally seem to be a Westerly, as it chops and changes as I weave around the b-roads. Yet sadly it does arrive in earnest at Stamford Bridge when I turn West properly. It's not too oppressive, but I can definitely feel it in my legs - the pedals become a little heavier, the rigid and efficient machine becomes a little softer, requiring more input for less gain. Relief as countless closed road signs lead to a bridge passable by bike but not car (the potential detour too much to bare thinking about of course).
At this stage I have to admit, that this endeavour, with its endless forgettable roads, in inclement weather, on my own, for the purpose of satisfying a purely numerical goal, is actually rather miserable.
"This is miserable" becomes my internal mantra. It floats round in my head. I am not interested in putting a positive spin on things. I must remember that my stubbornness has consequences. This is entirely of my own design, for reasons I cannot retrieve.

Near Benningbrough, I'm forced into a pothole by a 4x4 driver. Despite there being plenty of room on their side, pushing a cyclist off the road is the obvious choice in the mind of the urban 4x4 commander - don't want to get the land yacht near any bushes now do we? There's a thousand words of spite I could write on that alone, but I'll try and save the bile for something more worthwhile.
The ever too familiar whirring hiss of a puncture on a wet tyre arrives. The tyre sealant is trying its absolute best, but the neat little slit is just too keen to release air into the atmosphere. A hurried retrieval of the repair kit follows, and with surprisingly minimal fiddling, the hole is plugged. And I feel extra smug as pull out the little knife I'd freed up and lubricated the day before to trim the patch. I am generally relieved at how straightforward the repair was - having never actually reapired a tubeless tyre before. A quick air top up and I'm back on the way. The time off the saddle was definitely appreciated too. The familiar hissing reappears down the road but this time it's the rear, and clearly having witnessed my swift suturing of the wounded front tyre, this time the sealant leaps into action with no further surgery needed.

There's a quaint little wooden toll bridge at Alwark. And that's about all there is to worth mentioning beyond this point. Just drudgery into the wind. Forgettable road after forgettable road. Saddle discomfort seems to be about half the battle. Count miles, check the time, schedule slipping away, average speed waning. My brain clunking around as I try and do timing calculations for arrival times. I should be about 4 or 5 miles from Tadcaster now. See a sign. 8 miles to Tadcaster. Fuck sake. Sign by sign, the miles slowly lower.

Finally I get back to Tadcaster. Mild relief at the opportunity to refuel. My stomach feels bad. I force a sandwich down but it dawns on me that I've neglected to keep eating and I'm unlikely to recover in much of a meaningful way between now and home. 90 miles. Check the map. 15 to go. I just hope that my legs have something left for the hills into Leeds.

I feel grim. The last miles of a big ride are always bad, but with entirely faded legs, arriving inclines and a headwind now blowing me into single digit speeds, I have reached peak misery. I'm less than 10 miles from home and I'm trying to work out if I can somehow ring a taxi. Just get to 100, then you can bail. At one point I'm literally cursing into the wind. Thankfully there's no one around to witness me shouting "Oh just FUCK OFF" as I crawl uphill at 6mph, with the headwind threatening to stop me altogether. A low ebb.

But I do arrive home. Weary and out of sorts, but home and relatively on time. I'm only 10 minutes late for dinner with friends. I don't fancy any booze but I'm sure things will settle down with some food. I push around my roast dinner, before excusing myself to throw up what little I'd actually managed to eat.

I called in sick today.