Monday 21 September 2015

Lewis's First 50 mile ride - Cycle Derby Sportive, 80km 4,300ft

Yesterday I was a very proud dad. 

Lewis and me did the Cycle Derby 80km Sportive around the Peak District.  He's only 8 bless him but he's pretty strong - making light work of a lot of the climbs. And there were a lot of climbs as you can see on the route profile below. 

Well done Lewis - it was a pleasure riding with you yesterday and I hope the pizza was as good as you hoped !! Strava link here


Notts Derby Cyclocross, Alfreton Park

My first cross race of the season. I do love these early season races - so fast and frantic!
Alfreton Park is always a favourite of mine with two woodland sections, long climbs, swoopy descents and many twists and turns!

This year's course didn't disappoint - although a slow front puncture from lap 5 eventually took me out of the race in lap 6. Corners were starting to all get very sketchy and eventually I pulled over and found out why

Photo Courtesy of Steve M on flickr

Photo Courtesy of Steve M on flickr
Results for my race here
Results from Lewis's under 12's race here (he's currently 8)
Strava here

Ultra Tour of Matlock Bath : 4,600ft, 29 Miles - Painful !

I've not written this one up yet despite it being over a month ago. Couple of reasons - firstly, I did this run straight before we went off down to Devon for a week's hols and secondly - it felt the hardest out of the 4 or 5 times I've done it!!! It's always a hard route - even if I'm running well, but I put this attempts 'struggles' down to two things with hindsight. OK - three !

* New shoes. Not normally a problem and on the day and in the days after I barely thought twice about the shoes being an issue, but since i've been running with the club again on Tuesday's in September in my new shoes, I've been getting quite bad hamstring tightness. Just like I felt on this UTMB but on the day I put it down to 'lack of training'.

* Lack of training : I've not done that many runs over 25 miles this year and so this must have been a factor. However to counter this I was feeling great on the bike and I'd been short fell racing over the summer every week so this wouldn't be a big issue. Well, certainly a smaller issue than ...

* The heat ! I think I set off 5am ish for this one, but nevertheless, in early August it's only ever going to be either hot ... or humid ! I ran out of water halfway round and had to nosey through a campsite to try and find a tap - I do hope I didn't look too scary !


Strava link here
Ultra Tour of Matlock Bath gpx file here