Tell us about your weekend ride

^^^^^^@wrongcog
glad you and big paintbrush had a good and pleasant spin, and that you had your longest day in the saddle. I missed you guys whilst haring round Suffolk. (cue strava link of no interest to anyone but myself...)
http://app.strava.com/rides/8359694

It was an interesting ride. I had been planning on doing the Suffolk sunrise on Saturday. It turned out that it was actually on Sunday and that I had written it in my diary on the wrong day. It also turned out that I couldn't do it on Sunday because I had to be back in London. So, I decided to do it solo on Saturday morning.

My garmin did it's current favourite trick of losing all interest in guiding me about 45 miles in (apart from an insulting single beep to tell me I'd arrived at my destination 5 minutes after I flopped, exhausted, off my bike at my in-laws pad). Fortunately, the signage was already in place, and was the most thorough I've ever experienced, so I didn't get lost once.

Weather forecasts instructed me to prepare for lashings of sunshine and to wear summery lightweight clothing. When the lead grey skies finally opened on me 40 miles in at dunwich and soaked my already numb feet and fingers I was this close ( holds thumb and forefinger so close together that nothing is visible between them) to admitting defeat and calling in the rescue team.

However, because I am a very hardy and resourceful person, and not in anyway because the pub at dunwich was closed, I soldiered on. After a while it warmed up a bit and I felt a little cheerier. However, my ambition to average over 19mph was being thwarted by an absolute thug of a headwind. Not only that but the rain had washed the last of the oil off my chain which began to sound embarrassingly wheezy. The ride not taking me past any wd40 merchants I decided to pull into a tractor dealership somewhere in the middle of nowhere. I'm pretty certain they're 'not on here' but big love going out to them, if you ever need a tractor, they're the boys... Not satisfied with just spraying a bit of oil on my chain, they insisted on cleaning off the grunge with a rag beforehand, and offering me a cup of tea. Not only that, but they made me feel like lance Armstrong or Edmund Hillary, by being starstruck that it is possible for a human being to cycle 100 miles. An assertion that needed repeating a goodly number of times, along with pointing at the, by now quasi-defunct garmin, in order to convince them of it's truth value.

After that things looked up: the sun came out, I began to head south, so the headwind started to become a tailwind, I was steaming along the flats at 25mph, I might even make my desired average speed. Unfortunately, the gods of blacktop were not on my side that day. At about 85 miles there was a 7-8 mile stretch of road that was about half an inch deep in loose gravel, and I couldn't go faster than 15mph without feeling like I was about to wash out. This coincided with the moment my body chose to rebel against the lack of fuel I'd been giving it, and did a little spot of bonking. Still at least there was no one around to hear me screaming at my stupid legs to man the fuck up.

It is amazing how a familiar stretch of road can lift your spirits, and when I cycled into Melton and knew I was only a few miles from home, I was able to get my chakras in a line and peg it like a CEO all the way home.

The awesomeness of the day was further augmented by the most amazing BBQed fillet steak I've ever eaten and more red wine than was strictly necessary in the evening.

As we were driving back this morning there were loads of riders out on the course - plus one or two fixed/ss riders. I'll definitely do it again next year, though maybe on the correct day this time, eh...

Castle 100 next week - life's too good...