Not having had the opportunity for a holiday over the summer, our family is looking forward to going away with a number of friends from church for the weekend. We’ll be staying at Pilgrim Hall, a big old house set in 12 acres of grounds in the the East Sussex countryside. It’s an idillic setting for a quiet get-away. That said, with everyone that’s going it probably won’t be quite so quiet!
Why am I telling you all this? Well, it’s just 40km from home so I thought, “What better way to start the weekend-away than cycling there? It’s an ideal training opportunity not to be missed!” Being on the cautious side I figured that it would be best to do a trial run in advance. So, that’s what I did yesterday.
Having mapped out my route on mapometer.com I had a nasty shock when I looked at the elevation graph. There was a drawn-out 10km section of up-hill with an increase in altitude of over 160m. After this was a short steep down-hill followed by another long up-hill. In all it was an almost 15km section of uphills. Gulp! Armed with this knowledge I set off.
After almost two hours I reached Heathfield – it had been hard going. Really hard. I was almost in tears as I phoned Chris to update him on my progress; he would be coming in the car to collect me from my destination. Heathfield, as I recalled, was the start of the BIG long hill… I didn’t think I could face it after what I had been through already.
I’d pushed it hard and I’d cycled those 40km in 2.5hrs. I was pretty please with that. The only problem was that today, my legs ache, like they’ve not ached before… I just hope I can make it to work okay today!
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