The Lake Taupo Cycle Challenge
Two days out, and I feel achy. The weather is getting crazy mad with dark overcast skies, and painfully strong winds, and rain forecast to pour down in the weekend. I’m not feeling entirely confident of doing well this Saturday.
After my Sunday ride, my thighs were worked over a little too much; could barely squat, and sitting down and getting up were painful tasks. That pain has mostly gone away, but my legs feel almost like jello after attempting to beat my personal best for the individual time trial last night.
The wind was so horrible, I managed a measly 24km/h average from home out to Kairanga School for the meet. It’s only 9.5km away! I fared a little better in the time trial, about 30 seconds slower than last week. On the upside, had a nice tail-wind home, averaging an insane (for me) 35.6km/h.
However, I probably should’ve taken it a bit easier home, trying to spin rather than push. But I don’t like spinning that much, unless I’m coasting along in a bunch, as it’s very hard on my knees. Maybe that’s caused by bad technique, I dunno.
Anyways, originally I was aiming for a five and a half hour finish; now I feel like I’ll be lucky to do it in under 6 hours. Still, I have two days to try and recover… should’ve stayed home last night!
Tour de Manawatu
I have never ridden so far, or for so long without a break—116 kilometres non-stop in just under four hours.
The weather was very nice, mostly sunny with the occasional spot of cloud; just an annoying head wind for the final few kilometres to the finish line when I was already spent.
I got dropped twice from the bunches I was in. The first time was a silly mistake not pushing towards front of the bunch before starting up a small but potent rise after the very long Cheltenham straight. The other was between Feilding and Bunnythorpe where I just didn’t have the juice to keep up—mainly due to biking by myself for a long while after dropping off the first time.
So that was my first of hopefully many rides of the Tour de Manawatu!