Sometimes, you are much stronger than you think.

Sometimes, you are much stronger than you think.

On a whim I decided to do one of my longest rides in over 50 year of cycling. Needless to say, it got a bit tough.

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Welcome to the Vlog a couple of days ago I did my fourth ever longest ride in over 50 years of cycling but unfortunately there is a quick little spoiler alert as well uh unfortunately I was unable to uh film quite as much as I would have liked and I’ll explain why in

A minute so the ride I did was from here in water louville to the city of Oxford and if you were to look at that on a map and draw a straight line as the crow flies it is more or less 100 kilm but obviously you don’t cycle direct like

That so with the help of the Hammerhead dashboard and the commut app I created a route that took it to 115 kilm now the reason why I wanted to do that ride was because obviously in 2 weeks time I’m going down to South Africa to do one of my absolute bucket

List rides the Cape Town cycle tour and I just wanted to make 100% sure to myself that I was able to do that ride so I thought well I’d create re or recreate the metrics of that ride so just to recap they are uh the the Cape

Town ride is 110 kilm with 1200 M of climbing I thought it was, 1600 M but I recently saw a ride profile and it is only 1200 M but anyway I thought I would just recreate those metrics and cycle to Oxford now uh I started here uh bright and early on

Sunday morning from water louville and my route took me initially to a place called Petersfield which is about 12 kilm and that was all on the Queen Elizabeth Country Park cycle route which is uh kind of off-road it’s not it’s not gravel or or anything but it just it

Isn’t actually on the uh on the road and and very soon after starting that ride I quickly realized that I needed to focus on doing the ride itself rather than doing pieces to camera thinking about what I was going to say and stuff so that’s why I didn’t film a great deal on

That ride so from Petersfield my route then took me to a place called Alton and the routing took me through what we call called the hangers now basically the hangers are very steep little climbs 17 18 19% um it it cut a corner off but I knew

It was going to be very very tough and within 15 km of leaving the house I was walking up these climbs which obviously didn’t do a great deal for my confidence uh and for for my thoughts for the upcoming ride but nevertheless I managed to push on to Alton and by that point

I’d cycled about 35 kilm and I was starting to get a little bit tired now my little sister lives in Alton and it was very very tempting for me to think well okay I could just go around to her house have a cup of tea call Diana my

Other half and say well that’s it the ride’s over come and get me but I I just had a word with myself and I managed to just ignore those feelings and push on so from Alton my route took me to a place called odium and then onto the

Town of reading now once I was past Alton I was kind of outside of my comfort zone a little bit because although I’d driven those roads a few time I wasn’t overly familiar with them and I’d never ridden them on a bike in my entire life so I had no idea about

What to expect as it was the the route was pretty good the road was relatively undulating but still fairly easy and I got to reading okay and managed to navigate myself through the town it’s quite a busy town um and by that point I’d cycled 70 kilomet or so once I got

Through Reading I got to one of the outlying little towns called kavasam and I knew then once I got there I had a 134 kilm climb up to a ridge level with a town called didcot and that part of the ride was really hard indeed it was a

Very tight little Country Lane um no towns no Villages nothing it was just trees and road and it was it was very very hard and quite steep but um I I still managed to kind of get myself through it and and I got to the ridge

Level with this town of didcot and I was I was pretty tired my other half was tracking me on a phone app so just in case anything happened so she she would have known exactly where I was and again I was very tempted to call her and say

You know that’s it could you come and get me but no I continued to push on and continue towards Oxford I came down off the ridge and that brought me out in a town called Benson and when I got there the road did level out a bit and it became a bit more

Of a main road so the surface was much better uh but unfortunately that’s where the headwind started and I still had about 20 kilm to go and I was literally counting down every single kilometer every little descent I was kind of calculating in my head head well maybe

This is 500 M and that’ll take you half a kilometer off uh so when I get to the bottom there I’ll only have 18 kilm and it it was incredibly incredibly tough but somehow I managed to get myself to the city of Oxford I was absolutely shattered but I I felt

Absolutely amazing and I cycled to the very famous bridge of size and had my photo taken so um there’s the proof that I managed to do it and then I thought well I I just need a rest now but I I just didn’t know what to do with myself

I sat down my legs started aching so I had to stand up and move them about a bit and uh after a few minutes of that they started to ache so I had to sit down again so I was I was quite in a dilemma but um Diana managed to to

Finally find me and then we drove to the hotel I had a nice warm shower I was frozen through to the Bone and then I had a well- earned rest so that that was absolutely fantastic and it really kind of gave me a boost of confidence for the ride down in South

Africa I knew a 100% that I’m able to cycle 120 kilm with, 1300 M of climbing so I I exceeded the metrics for the South Africa ride and another thing that it taught me was that um I I’ve got far more in the tank

Than I actually think I do so when I got to Alton only 35 kilomet into the ride I was kind of all ready to give up at that point but I did push on and it was another 90 kilm of cycling so how I did that that was just yeah

Just just talking to myself and just trying to believe that I could actually do it and and lo and behold I did do it so yeah if if ever you’re in that situation where you think you can’t go on yeah you probably do have far more in the tank than you think you

Do so now that I’ve done that big ride the plan is to do what I believe Runners do before they do a big event now I my understanding is that they call this tapering so they’ll go out and do their big training run and then in the next

Two weeks 10 days or so before the big event they’ll start taking things a lot easier so that’s that’s precisely what I’m going to do I’m still going to go out and do my 45 minutes on the turbo train every day unfortunately the weather’s still pretty bad uh but those

Sessions won’t be particularly hard they’ll all be kind of Zone to nice and easy just keep myself ticking over and just building up or maintaining the fitness that I’ve built up if the weather does improve and I manage to get out on the road again I’ll be going out

And doing nice easy rides but they won’t be uh you know that long they’ll be 50 kilm at most although typically they they’ll probably be more like 25 30 kilm again just nice and easy just to keep myself ticking over and then hopefully that way that will just maintain the

Fitness keep me um nice and fresh already ready for my big ride down in South Africa so yeah wish me luck