S
Simon Brooke
Guest
On the 18th of October last year, the day after my 49th birthday, I rode
with a couple of friends up to Wanlockhead, up the Mennock pass and
down the Dalveen. It felt like an epic - like a truly heroic ride - and
I wrote up a ride report which I posted here and also on my blog, where
you can still find it:
<URL:http://www.jasmine.org.uk:80/dogfood/story/article_16.html>
Today I did it again, with one of the same friends. Beautiful day -
utterly beautiful day - but it's still 400 metres of continuous climb,
and probably 600 metres of total climb. And... we just had a great
ride. Thoroughly enjoyable blast through the high country; at good
speed, too - according to Autroroute (which must be wrong) the route we
rode[1] was 100.4Km, and we completed in 3 hours 5 minutes, which works
out at an average speed of just over twenty miles an hour. Like I say
this /must/ be wrong, because I can't do twenty in a ten mile time
trial on the flat, but still we did a good speed.
And the reason I'm writing this is because today wasn't an epic. It was
a pleasant if poorly attended club run[2]. It was a Sunday morning
just-for-fun ride, which was a lot of fun and all, but I don't feel the
need to write a report about it. I rode the Dalbeattie Red Route both
last night and the night before, and two years ago that in itself would
have been an epic. Epics, in fact, seem to have been the subject of
runaway inflation over the past couple of years. This time last year
100Km would have been an epic even without big hills. Now it seems
almost routine.
And the reason for writing this now is largely pour encourager les
autres. At 48 I had been some kind of a cyclist all of my adult life.
And yet, through this group and through my club, I've improved my
fitness, my endurance, my skill and my technique immeasurably in just
one year. If I can do it, so can you.
[1] Thornhill - A76 - Mennock - Wanlockhead - Leadhills - Elvanfoot -
A702 - Carronbridge - Thornhill
[2] Two of our riders are in Turkey this week, riding for Scotland; one
is on holiday in the highlands; and most of the rest are up in
Inverness this weekend for the Scottish Cross Country Championships. So
there were only the old and feeble out this morning.
--
[email protected] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
Windows 95:
You, you, you! You make a grown man cry...
M. Jagger/K. Richards
with a couple of friends up to Wanlockhead, up the Mennock pass and
down the Dalveen. It felt like an epic - like a truly heroic ride - and
I wrote up a ride report which I posted here and also on my blog, where
you can still find it:
<URL:http://www.jasmine.org.uk:80/dogfood/story/article_16.html>
Today I did it again, with one of the same friends. Beautiful day -
utterly beautiful day - but it's still 400 metres of continuous climb,
and probably 600 metres of total climb. And... we just had a great
ride. Thoroughly enjoyable blast through the high country; at good
speed, too - according to Autroroute (which must be wrong) the route we
rode[1] was 100.4Km, and we completed in 3 hours 5 minutes, which works
out at an average speed of just over twenty miles an hour. Like I say
this /must/ be wrong, because I can't do twenty in a ten mile time
trial on the flat, but still we did a good speed.
And the reason I'm writing this is because today wasn't an epic. It was
a pleasant if poorly attended club run[2]. It was a Sunday morning
just-for-fun ride, which was a lot of fun and all, but I don't feel the
need to write a report about it. I rode the Dalbeattie Red Route both
last night and the night before, and two years ago that in itself would
have been an epic. Epics, in fact, seem to have been the subject of
runaway inflation over the past couple of years. This time last year
100Km would have been an epic even without big hills. Now it seems
almost routine.
And the reason for writing this now is largely pour encourager les
autres. At 48 I had been some kind of a cyclist all of my adult life.
And yet, through this group and through my club, I've improved my
fitness, my endurance, my skill and my technique immeasurably in just
one year. If I can do it, so can you.
[1] Thornhill - A76 - Mennock - Wanlockhead - Leadhills - Elvanfoot -
A702 - Carronbridge - Thornhill
[2] Two of our riders are in Turkey this week, riding for Scotland; one
is on holiday in the highlands; and most of the rest are up in
Inverness this weekend for the Scottish Cross Country Championships. So
there were only the old and feeble out this morning.
--
[email protected] (Simon Brooke) http://www.jasmine.org.uk/~simon/
Windows 95:
You, you, you! You make a grown man cry...
M. Jagger/K. Richards
