Tell us about your weekend ride

Have fun man, some friends got placements out there- spectacular!

Went for a spin in Surrey on saturday and then Kent sunday. Bit fruitful finally.

http://ridehardridehome.co.uk/

I was on a fair few of those roads yesterday morning n'all, I probably saw you at some point.

You weren't wearing a plum coloured rapha short sleeve were you? I was sporting a yellow On One jersey

Stole croft's route above and moved things around a wee bit. Gave me a few hours of lush green views in Essex.

First time I have taken someone else's route off the web and used it on the Garmin app on my mobile.
So far I haven't managed to copy other people's Strava routes to my phone. Is that possible? Any tips on how to make do with just my iphone and not have to buy an actual Garmin would be very welcome. I'm not blown away by the user-friendliness of the Garmin app. Kept having to move back and forth between that and the phone's native map app. Perhaps there is a way around this?

Had a few days on the Swiss/Italian border of perfect cycling around the lakes and surrounding mountains. Highlight had to be hitting the Muro Di Sormano, the most insane climb!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muro_di_Sormano

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Feck^

It was incredible and a relief to hit the top. It also came after 5k of switchback ascent, but totally worth it. Also what goes up must come down and the descent to Lake Como was just amazing sweeping corners and switch backs. Would definitely recommend doing the climbs to Madonna del Ghisallo and then the Muro. Not easy but worth it!

i think I saw like, 3 of you in Clapham this morning just after 9, was that your brunch? (lots of them within the vicinity of CS7 attempting to find the right way).

We were a bit later than that ed and only two groups of two.

http://www.strava.com/activities/75613547

First time riding out and around box hill for 4 years. Really lovely ride, there were a few fast roads but a decent route all in all. Then to cap it off, we met a guy outside the cafe at the top who was repairing bikes pro-bono, you all probably know him by first name already, but he was a great help as my rear derailer was slipping for the outbound ride, no probs on the way back.

Just wanted to plug his website......http://www.xwayscycles.co.uk/

Alan was very forth coming with telling me what it is he was doing with the gears and what to look out for on my London to Hamburg trip, all very helpful since I only know the basic's of bike mechanics and haven't been on a tour before. Thanks Alan.

about 20 odd miles from Camden down to Battersea via South Ken, all along the Southbank to tower bridge, over to Shoreditch, then back to Camden...

Went for a spin in Surrey on saturday and then Kent sunday. Bit fruitful finally.

http://ridehardridehome.co.uk/

Not bad weekend. Well done on the win.

^ +1

Nice to see you won this in a similar fashion to that three stage race, i.e. solo attacking to reach a break away and then just cruising right past them.

Thanks. Yes Ndeipi.

Did 140km with the girlfriend yesterday. So hot (~40C), so humid (~40+%), no shade (and absolutely blazing sun all day)... we both came close to genuine heat exhaustion I think. The last 20 km or so were just painfully slow (and just generally painful). We ended up stopping one last time all of 3 km from our guesthouse (and we knew as much) just to duck into the A/C and get some cold water.

http://app.strava.com/activities/76076443

Worth it for the view though - Amanohashidate, one of "Japan's Three Most Beautiful Views".

Riding along the sandbar.

To get the view properly, you're supposed to get up high and view it through your legs with your back turned, making the sandbar the 'bridge to Heaven'. Weird; doubly so if you're foreigners wearing cycling kit.

Mooning the world.

Bridge to Heaven... apparently.

Seeing as Japan is upside down, this just turns it the right way up. Makes sense.

Girlfriend in full length tights and long sleeved jersey from the look of it... or are those arm screens? In any event, no wonder you were on the verge of exhaustion under those conditions. Beautiful view though.

Arm screens and full-length but very thin tights. She likes the SPF to keep her tan even - can't blame her, looking at my own incredible/hideous tan lines! Sun cream does very little here (doubly so since you immediately sweat it off).

She may have quite impressive cyclist's thighs (don't tell her I said that) but at least her tan is still perfect!

Funnily enough in these conditions I've found that personally, wearing a (reasonably thin) Sportwool jersey feels no hotter than lycra. You're going to be absolutely pissing sweat everywhere anyway, so the trick is hydration more than anything. Sportwool stays more comfortable when wet (which you will be, 10 minutes into any ride) so I tend to opt for that these days.

Checking the actual records for yesterday shows a high of 38.1 Celcius and ~40% humidity, which gives a 'heat index' of 44 Celcius (in the shade). So yeah.

Man that would kill me in 15mins.

I'm currently riding in shorts, and short sleeve jersey. At 14C, adding a base at 10C and below.

It was 17-19C on my weekend ride, and I was cooking.

Completed an EPIC 0.0k this weekend at an incredible average pace of 0kph.

Beertastic.

^ Must spread rep...

Found a nice evening spin.

Me too, from London to Guildford via the canal towpath, then train it to Wimbledon (while he's heading off to Worcester Park).

Was awesome, and caked with dust.

Went on my first CX ride today. Perfect weather - mid-20s (finally!) and... uh... torrential rain.

http://app.strava.com/activities/77291694

Good fun finding out what's possible on a new bike when you're ploughing through huge 4-inch-deep puddles and sliding about on wet rocks...

Did a silly thing considering with crashes and broken bikes, in the last 15 weeks I've only done two rides longer than 1 hour 10 mins. Bank holiday, the missus is away, nothing planned, so what do you do?

Ask my mate if he fancies doing the coast to coast to coast. Sunderland, Whitehaven, Sunderland. 240 miles, 14 hours, 16,500 feet of climbing, lashing rain, near to zero visibility over the hills and riding with only 3 hours sleep the night before!

Tired now.

About to start the descent down from Hartside..arse going like a rabbit's nose the whole way. Especially two weeks after a bad crash on a wet corner. Rapha jacket feeling suitably epic.

Top effort!

Was very excited to take out the SuperSix with new carbon wheels this morning even with the ominous weather still lingering. Was loving life and really pleased with the bike until I cycled over somebody's cat and killed it...

I know it's just a cat, but it was a horrible conversation to have as you can probably imagine. I was entering a left hand bend at probably 20mph and saw the cat on the right hand side of the road, instinctively I slowed down just in case but it ran out and went under the bike with the rear wheel going over it. You could instantly tell it was seriously injured (like a broken neck or back) as it was spasming and flipping in the air all over the place which was obviously horrible to watch. After a minute it lay still breathing but very still at the side of the road where I went into the local country pub to ask if it was there's. Turns out it was, and with half the pub staff in tears, I even offered to dig a hole myself just to feel a little better. As I have a cat myself I feel very bad but guess accidents happen. After everybody calmed down they did thank me for stopping, and apologised for the little abuse that was understandably directed at me.