Tell us about your weekend ride

I never feel fully equipped unless I've got a good map with me.

When I first started going on HDW training runs (see above) I was near the start of a long drawn out comeback - it took me a long time to get back to where I was when I was fourteen. At that time our TR's were pretty ferocious - they were led by Martyn Roach who was then the current national 12 hour champion, and there was no question of waiting for anyone who weakened - it was a case of 'see you Wednesday' (at the clubroom, that is). Martyn, who always rode at the front, would rarely say where he was taking us and would just work on what he called a 'need to know basis' - e.g. 'we're turning left in 100 yards'. The thinking behind this was to stop the faint hearted from turning off and leaving the group before we came to a big climb.

I would usually get dropped miles out into unknown territory and be in such a state that I would not want to be waited for, preferring to crawl home on my own.

And that was why one of my essential bits of kit was a small scale map of the whole of the area north, west and south of Staines to enable me to find the easiest route back.

Don't be put off by reading this from coming out with us - we're a lot mellower nowadays.

To be honest the whole day was a fuck up. A friend was supposed to be with us and though we had roughly planned a route, he was the one that knew the route and he bailled when the g/f was already on her way to meet me. We both had virtually dead phones and our planning consisted of finding an internet cafe and printing off a few maps...

A lesson learnt, until a few years ago I lived in the Midlands and had long since reached a point that even 50 miles from Brum I knew where I was and how to get home. I guess I'd got complacent for the need to plan on a bike.