Festive 500 - Ride 2

Before I start on today’s ride, I just wanted to say that I hope you all had a fantastic Christmas yesterday and that Santa brought you everything you wanted and more.

Now then, today’s ride.  What can I say other than wet and horrible.  I woke up this morning and didn’t want to go so was off to a bad start before I’d even got out of bed.  Then, out of the blue came a text from Paul letting me know that there were some people on Strava who had already completed the 500km!  I decided to see if he was going out on his bike, hoping I’d be able to tag along and give me the motivation needed to get out there despite the weather.  This was easily the best decision I could have made.  He was going out so for a start, I would be going out on the bike when I didn’t want to but secondly I ended up doing more miles than I would have if I’d managed to push myself to go out on my own.  The only way I can describe today’s ride is my worst experience on a bike ever that didn’t involve a crash.  I know this sounds dramatic considering the only thing that really went “wrong” was that it was bucketing down with rain.  For some reason though I was mentally drained today, Mother Nature had beaten me down and I was ready to give in.  Physically I felt fine, my legs were great but every push on the pedals seemed to require more effort than normal.  When I finally got home, soaked to the bones and realising once again that absolutely none of my bike kit is waterproof, I decided that was it as far as this challenge is concerned.  I rode 42 miles today, taking my total towards the challenge to over 100, a third of the way there.  I decided though that as long as the rain was coming down, I was staying in and looking at the weather forecast, I wouldn’t be going out on the bike again this week.

Since I came home this afternoon, I’ve had chance to dry off, warm up and relax a bit.  I also watched Mark Cavendish’s new DVD.  Despite everything I had felt earlier on this afternoon, watching it gave me the bug to get back out on my bike as soon as I could.  The misery of today had faded and I’m now looking forward to going out again, backed up by the fact that after writing this, I’m off to look online for waterproof clothing!  It’s strange but at the moment there is a strange sense of pride within me.  I was at my lowest on the bike today but I still finished the ride.  There were several times where I could have had a lift home or turned back but I didn’t, I stuck at it and got it done.  It wouldn’t have been the case though if I hadn’t have had my buddy there with me today so thanks Paul for staying with me around there today.  I don’t know how my legs are going to feel in the morning but if I’m able to, I expect I’ll end up going out for a couple of hours and get one step closer to the magical 310 miles!