http://ridewithgps.com/routes/2287329
I had fond memories of Cornwall based on numerous family holidays in the 1970's / 80's. Today all that changed. Cornwall can stick its stupid hilly roads up its too far from anywhere ar*e.
So in summary those are my thoughts on day one. The longer version follows....
Day one is reputedly the toughest day of LeJog with almost 7000ft of climbing (feet used as it sounds like more) packed into 87 miles. The day started with a team breakfast at 06:30 before driving the 10 miles or so to Land's End. The obligatory photos next to the sign followed, including this one of Clare and I that I rather like.
It was a fairly warm morning but annoyingly the UK's prevailing wind seems to have done the old switcheroo on us at this crucial time. We set off making good pace and even managed about 10% of the climbing in the first 10% of the ride. This probably lulled us into a false sense of security. Later on the climbing was steeper and more concentrated than anything I had ridden before. That said we made quite good progress to our lunch stop at St Austel. Lacking local knowledge we were able to find a passing police man where we could get the best pasties in town (they just call them pasties round here, the local negates the Cornish pre-fix). He and a local chap eating one while he walked suggested Malcolm Bannecutt's.
They were right to do so. The pasties were really rather good far superior to the ones from my local Co-Op at home. Another boost here was a kind lady walking past gave me £5.00 towards Prostate Cancer Research, my chosen charity for this ride. Note to self: Store it separately to my wallet and do not spend it on beer later.
The lunch stop was at 55 miles out of a total of 87 so we were in good spirits as riding 30 odd miles is easy and usually would take 2 hours-ish. Sadly we were greeted by an endless succession of steep hills which put pay to any notions of easyness. Still if it was easy everyone would be doing it.
Keen cyclists among you, or even couch potatoes who are fans of televised cycling will be aware of the system used in the sport for categorising climbs. Essentially they range from 5 to 1 in order of difficulty, a Category 1 climb being the toughest, excepting the 'reserved for the pros' hors-categorie which is even steeper than a Category 1. Got it? Good.
Point being today's ride included no fewer than 8 Category 4 climbs. Cambridgeshire where I did the majority of my training rides contains precisely none, in fact I don't think it even has a Cat 5 climb in the whole county! See Strava for a more detailed look at the route and how we got on.
The penultimate really bas*ard steep climb bought some light relief at the top when we arrived at the village of 'minions' I had speculated that they must have cashed in on the minion mania that seems to be sweeping the under fives of the country (and a lot of morons who post memes on facebook, which I agree says as much about my face-friends as it does me, love you all really.) The following pictures shows they don't mess about in Minions, full on cash in:
I will say again, the red of our kit is not a slimming colour.
Following the climb into minions we covered the final 10 miles to our hotel relatively quickly, albeit with at least one more nasty hill to spoil things.
Tomorrow is more of the same but ends up with a relatively flat final 50 or so miles to our stop at Weston Super Mare. We will be joined on tomorrows ride by two guest riders, Chris who is a lifelong friend for the whole day and Peter, a 15 year friend (so far) who will be joining us in time for the flat bit.
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Enjoy the ride Ben - very jealous!
ReplyDeleteFrom Mark (becky's brother)