I’ve not ridden at all yet this week. I suppose I’ll be well rested for Mayhem, or well off the pace. I’ve been working some pretty big hours since Friday, a lot of the time commuting by car from Manchester to Workington (that’s almost Scotland!) and back, every day.

Awful. Getting back to my mile-long commute tomorrow though, will get out for a ride too. Oh, I also need to pack my stuff for the race! EEEK!

When me and Phil were munching on butties and cake at the caff in Hayfield last Wednesday, we were somewhat surprised and disappointed when we looked at the GPS for our total mileage. It felt like we’d ridden further, but the machine was telling us “no”. We took it as gospel at the time, shrugged and carried on. I was a bit concerened though that I had the GPS in my jersey pocket, underneath a rather large rucksack. I thought it might have lost signal on occasion.

Turns out it was wrong. After some more measuring and calculations by Phil and me seperately (Gmap, Anquet and the paper map), it turns out that my total mileage for that ride was 30 more than I thought at just short of 120 miles (A June century). That’s a total for Wednesday of 135 miles (added to the social ride that evening) and a total for the week of 286 miles. A new record!

Only 14 short of 300. Bugger!

Good news though. I’ll attach the GPS to the bars in future.

300 miles was the target for this week. Saturday’s ride wasn’t great though. Out on the road bike, early morning. Cold, windy, raining, getting wetter. Horrible. It was winter again, except I hadn’t dressed for winter. Cut the ride short after 2 hours when I could no longer feel my fingers or toes, headed home and went back to bed for a bit. It’s been ages since I did that, but I enjoyed it I must admit. At least I climbed plenty whilst I was out.

So…I had a bit of a mountain to climb today, mileage-wise. The only thing that could save me now (given the fact that I only had the afternoon spare for training) was a road century. The thing is, the sky is grey, it’s still chilly and it’s raining. It’s still winter. The summer was here last week though!!! Waaaah!

Going for a ride on the road bike, like I do all the time in winter, would be far too depressing.

So I decided to ride a 11.5 mile local offroad loop (on some of the trails “made famous” by Hit the North). 13 Arches, Philips Park, over to Nob End, climb up Prestolee Road, along the cheeky singletrack by the marina. I reckoned I had time to ride this loop five times. So I did.

The plan was to keep the lap times consistent (tick, all within a minute of each other), a good average (not bad at 12.5mph) and keep the heart rate under control (average around 80% – good). No crashes, no dog bites, returned happy having ridden a total of 59 miles off-road and mostly out of the pesky wind.

No 300 miles this week though. 44 miles short. ‘Bothered.

With Deb and the children away in Spain all week, there wasn’t much to do apart from go to work and ride bikes. Actually, that’s not strictly true. I’ve been living in relative squalor all week because all I’ve been doing is working or riding bikes instead of hoovering and washing dishes, but you know what I mean. Besides, eating pasta straight from the pan takes me back to my youth 😉

Anyway, the week went kind of like this;

Monday –Up early, out to Tesco to buy “appropriate” food for the week then work then home, eat food, feed dog, out on bike for a shortish 30 miler offroad (Birtle, Nangreaves, Gin Croft Lane, etc – lots of climbing). The ground was dry and rock hard so a stupidly fast pace was necessary. Rode for a bit with a bloke on an Orange P7 who I tried to drop on a long downhill into Edenfield but my bottle ran out before his did.

Tuesday – up early, 8K run then home, eat, work, home, eat, bike out for 40 miles off road, this time the Ramsbottom/maggot farm/Whitton Weavers/Winter Hill loop then home – get stuff ready for big ride tomorrow then flop into bed.

Wednesday – Day off work. Rode to Rooley Moor Road at 6am to meet Phil. We had a plan for a long ride that was similar to the epic Dave and I did a few weeks ago however the lack of a pick-up at the end meant we’d have to do an out-and-back. We rode the MTL anti-clockwise for a few miles from Rooley Moor to Summit, then (can you guess?) went south on the Pennine Bridleway as far as Hayfield 35 or so miles and 2000ish metres of ascent away. Huge cups of tea and chicken baguettes in the caff at the bottom of Lantern Pike then turned around and rode back on the same route. Incidentally the return leg of this ride was almost an hour quicker than the outbound journey – Phil’s never done anything this long before, I think he was saving his legs early on!

The weather was perfect. Dry but not mega-sunny, a slight breeze. It was also clear enough to be able to see the Scout Moor wind farm in the distance from almost the furthest point south on our journey – I think the fact that we could actually see our destination still with 40 miles to go spurred us on somewhat. That, and the fact that I had to be getting a move on…

90 or so miles later (70ish offroad) I arrived home again after riding back though the Rochdale and Middleton rush hour traffic, ate more pasta from the pan, showered, took the dog out for a walk then swapped the Scandal for the 456 for another ride the same evening with Simon, Neil and Andrew. No racing, not training, just the regular Wednesday night giggle on the local trails. Another 15 miles, one beer and a few more nettle stings.

Home, dumped bike in kitchen with the other one, ironed a shirt for the day after, flopped into bed.

Thursday – 14 hours of riding on Wednesday so Thursday was a no running, no riding, just resting kinda day. Work, home, eat food, took the dog to Heaton Park for a nosey at the Oasis concert, went home, watered plants, tidied up and then cleaned bikes whilst listening to Kasabian and Oasis play live a mile or so away. Successfully avoided Big Brother (actually, I’ve just realised that I’ve only watched 20 minutes of telly all week), watched Obama’s Egypt speech on the laptop, flopped into bed.

Friday – work then collected Deb and the girls from the airport. Interval session on the turbo, watched the rain come down, got the road bike ready for tomorrow.

I could bag a record number of miles this week – certainly a record in terms of hours spent riding (the more important statistic in my opinion), which hopefully will equate to good preparation for Mountain Mayhem in a couple of weeks’ time. There’s a lot of miles to be ridden this weekend but a record-breaking week is definitely ‘on’.

Debbie, the kids and me went over to Lee Quarry this morning to watch the race. Jacqui was racing, as was Simon (in the singlespeed cat). The weather continues to be AWESOME, I’m so giddy with it I’ve even been drinking beer 😉

Simon was 2nd singlespeeder (YAY!), Jacqui was 2nd laydee (YAY!). The winner of the singlespeed cat was running 32:18, so pretty spinny but obviously fast enough to maintain a good average. Food for thought I supppose…maybe 34:16 is just plain stupid.

Later on I went for a ride with Andrew – we did a local loop, explored some nice trails near Bolton, rode down some rather steep steps and generally had a lot of fun…which is what it’s all about after all. Some of the trailside plants have got out of hand though; it’s been a while since my arms and legs were itchy as much as this but I have a feeling that they will be buzzing for some days yet. My immunity to nettle stings normally kicks in around August so there’s some way to go yet before I can ride around here without squealing like a big girl.

Once I got home I opened another beer. What the hell is that all about?!!?