After a frustrating week of suffering from a weird kind of cold ‘thing’, (not a full-on snotty cold but a listless, tired-out, just-want-to-go-to-bed cold),I knew I was feeling better as soon as I’d just knocked out six fast laps of the new ‘red’ trails and some other stuff in the local woods. Instead of feeling ill and that I couldn’t breathe I was able to push hard and was properly shifting again.
My week-long grumpy mood rapidly evaporated and I was wearing my head-to-toe suit of wet winter mud with pride.
I felt great for a few hours anyway….
Later that same day Debbie and I went to a party at a friend’s house and had rather a lot to drink. This was a Bad Move.
I was doing the Cumbrian Cracker cyclosportive the day after and my red wine and lager excess followed by a good, solid three hours’ sleep meant that I spent the entire ride feeling like I wanted to be sick when I should have been feeling on top of the world because my cold had gone.
Oh well. Better crack on then. Meeting up with Dave after the sign-on, we got ready for the off and I recounted to him just how many glasses of wine and cans of lager I’d drank the night before. It probably wasn’t loads and loads but it felt like one or two too many.
The first climb up Red Bank soon had me feeling sick, however for the most part the route isn’t terribly difficult. It seems that all the flattish roads in the Lake District have been assembled into one 60 mile loop and I was often thanking my lucky stars that none of the ‘proper’ Lakeland passes were on today’s menu. Once we arrived at the one and only feed station in Cartmel I devoured some real food and had a cuppa. Felt a bit better.
In spite of the amber weather warning, the predicted rain didn’t seem to materialise and apart from two or three (very) deep puddles, the roads were all pretty much clear of debris. What started out as something that I could quite easily have given a miss ended up being a brilliant morning of great views, good company and doorstep-sized slabs of cake.
About three and a half hours later, we arrived back in Grasmere, had a bowl of soup and I went home, bang on schedule.
Dave however did the decent thing and rode the route again 😉
Jase 