A few Memories While I Gather my Thoughts!
We started training for the trip in earnest sometime in the spring after one of the coldest and iciest winters in years.
That meant none of us had done much cycling for several months. I, for one, felt pretty rusty and lacking strength. The others reported similar feelings, although all these things are relative!
I also set out with the intention of equipping myself with a good touring bike for the trip and ideally for most of my training. It's very difficult to switch bikes just before a big ride and it increases the risk of injury when the pressure is on.
So I was reluctant to get stuck into training on my old mountain bike, but I needed some basic fitness, so I decided I just had to get on with it.
Within a month or so of starting fairly regular rides around my Suffolk home, we arranged a trip to the Yorkshire Dales. This was a big step up. It meant carrying some luggage for the first time and taking on hills bigger than anything I'd seen since our coast to coast last September.
That was a wake up, but I survived. Some of those Yorkshire hills are steeper than anything we would meet in the Alps (or so I was told), but much, much shorter.
Getting the miles in was my biggest problem. John and JR managed to do more, but we all felt we needed more time on the bikes. Our wives didn't necessarily agree...
Most of my rides were 20-30 miles. I added one 60-miler and did the Bury Wheel, a 100 mile circuit around Bury St Edmunds in early Summer, but apart from the training weekends I wasn't managing consecutive days on the bike, let alone big distances.
Anyway, with another two trips to the Dales, one to the Cotswolds and only rolling Suffolk hills to test my legs in the meantime, I joined John and JR in Paris on 4th September.
The plan (mine anyway) was to build our fitness further during the first few 'easy' days as we followed the Seine southeast then eastwards from Notre Dame.
In fact, after the first stop-start day out of Paris to a 'closed' camp site, we then faced two days of strong, persistent headwinds, and then the hills started, JR's gears broke, we ran short of food and the weather took a definite turn for the worse...
And we were beginning to fall behind our very testing schedule.
But more on all that next time!
Roy
That meant none of us had done much cycling for several months. I, for one, felt pretty rusty and lacking strength. The others reported similar feelings, although all these things are relative!
I also set out with the intention of equipping myself with a good touring bike for the trip and ideally for most of my training. It's very difficult to switch bikes just before a big ride and it increases the risk of injury when the pressure is on.
So I was reluctant to get stuck into training on my old mountain bike, but I needed some basic fitness, so I decided I just had to get on with it.
Within a month or so of starting fairly regular rides around my Suffolk home, we arranged a trip to the Yorkshire Dales. This was a big step up. It meant carrying some luggage for the first time and taking on hills bigger than anything I'd seen since our coast to coast last September.
That was a wake up, but I survived. Some of those Yorkshire hills are steeper than anything we would meet in the Alps (or so I was told), but much, much shorter.
Getting the miles in was my biggest problem. John and JR managed to do more, but we all felt we needed more time on the bikes. Our wives didn't necessarily agree...
Most of my rides were 20-30 miles. I added one 60-miler and did the Bury Wheel, a 100 mile circuit around Bury St Edmunds in early Summer, but apart from the training weekends I wasn't managing consecutive days on the bike, let alone big distances.
Anyway, with another two trips to the Dales, one to the Cotswolds and only rolling Suffolk hills to test my legs in the meantime, I joined John and JR in Paris on 4th September.
The plan (mine anyway) was to build our fitness further during the first few 'easy' days as we followed the Seine southeast then eastwards from Notre Dame.
In fact, after the first stop-start day out of Paris to a 'closed' camp site, we then faced two days of strong, persistent headwinds, and then the hills started, JR's gears broke, we ran short of food and the weather took a definite turn for the worse...
And we were beginning to fall behind our very testing schedule.
But more on all that next time!
Roy
Labels: cycling up hills, Jeremy Rushton, John Carrel, John Hubbard, Lexpress, Make a Wish Foundation, MS Society, paris to venice, Roy Everitt
posted by Roy Everitt at
21:21
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