Falling for a Scone

Sunday 1st April 2012

Cycling
03:29:46 – 53.95 Miles (15.40 MPH / HR Zone 2 / 73% Max / Cadence 79rpm)

I had been invited out by my neighbour to join his regular Sunday group today.  I must admit I was a bit nervous joining in as I was hoping that I would not be holding them up or even worse getting blown straight out the back of the pack and left for dead a long way from home.

As it turned out, they were a great bunch of fellas and girls and I managed to hold my own in the mid pack the whole way.

I had originally planned to do about 4.30 hrs, but we did less than that as actual riding time, but the time we were out was quite ab it longer than that - mainly due to a forlorn and fruitless  search for an open coffee shop along the way.  Nowhere open in Downpatrick, Killyleagh, Saintfiled or Temple.  So we eventually got a coffee and Scone when we were only about 4 miles from home - but my treacle scone tasted fantastic.

I am so delighted that I paced myself really well, and felt very comfortable the whole way and in the first 25 miles was averaging almost 18 mph.  On the way home from Saintfiled, I managed to hold on to the fast guys for about half the way and then just fell off them a bit - but it went really well.

One minor mishap was when I pulled up to the kerb in Saintfield where the faster guys had pulled over ( at a closed coffee shop) and hit a bit of gravel, recovered the slide but could not unclip and fell flat on my side right in from of the bunch of guys.  Not he best way to make an impression on people you don't know.  they were not too rough on me and thankfully both the bike and I were undamaged.

Really enjoyed it today but I am slightly starting to worry about my biking in that I think I need to do more mileage and longer "long" rides. I need to work on this now.