Confidence

36 miles. That little incident the last time i rode my bike dented my confidence quite a bit. It's made me worry about what happens when things go wrong with the bike, as i suppose they're bound to sooner or later, especially when the weather turns. I've just been out in the rain with Stuart, which has restored my faith in the bike a bit. I mended the split tyre with a combination of gaffer tape and sealant meant for window frames and it held up fine today. I decided to have a go at fixing it, because i was getting a bit fed up of splashing out on endless things for the bike. I do need one more thing - shoe covers. My feet got very wet today, and as they are not really moving much this meant they also became very cold. I definitely don't want to be cycling all day long with cold feet.

All going so well!

71 Miles. Well, it was all going so well. 60 miles down and nearing home, having cycled to visit my friend Michael in Altrincham, and then the heavens opened. My glasses rendered useless and only able to see about 10 metres in front of me I didn't really reaslise that the puddle i was going through was a cunningly disguised pothole. When you get a puncture on a road bike you know straight away. This time i had two and it felt as though my bike had exploded because i was gathering speed, going downhill at the time. Anyway a little adversity wasn't going to stop me though, i knew i had to learn to deal with this kind of thing and so set about finding some shelter and changing the innertubes. Some 45 minutes later i was ready to go again, just about to mount the bike when i heard a hissing sound coming from the front tyre and sure enough it had gone along with, as i discovered later, the shreaded tyre.

So 10 miles from home what else could i do but make a slightly humiliating call to Karen, my wife, and ask her to come and pick me up. "I can't do this when you're in the middle of Scotland" she told me. This though had occured to me and i'm putting my tribulations of this afternoon down to experience and intend to make sure i'm never in that kind of situation again. Other than this, overall it's been a positive day. I did the ride today on my own, having to navigate unknown teritory for the first time and also carried quite a bit more weight on my bike than previously. I also cycled another 11 miles on my mountain bike when i eventually got home, just to ensure i'd been further than ever before, hence the 71 miles. I've also now got my ticket to Thurso in Scotland on July 5th for the bargin price of £26.20, so it's all systems go

Treacle Tart

66 miles. A bit of a step up today. It wasn't really planned. I'd arranged to meet Stuart at 9am expecting to go and ride for a few hours. When i asked him how far we were going to ride, he told me he had 100km in mind - not what i was expecting. Anyway I figured i was going to have to cycle that far sooner or later, so just decided to go with it and i'm glad i did. It was another great day, there were times when I flagged a bit but taking on some food at regular intervals did the trick. We stopped at a really rustic cafe in Audlem near Market Drayton, Shropshire and had treacle tart and custard, one of the perks of burning all those calories - you have to replace them somehow. Having finished I feel great, nicely tired. It's given me quite a bit of confidence in my ability to do the 100miles that will be required daily to complete John O'Groats to Land's End. I'll just have to wait and see how feel tomorrow.

Changing Gears

39 miles. Well I had a lovely afternoon in the sunshine today. I went out with my friend Stuart who is an experienced cyclist and is turning into something of a cycling mentor to me. He'd plotted a route around some of the back roads of Cheshire, in and around the really nice village of Tarporley. It was great to be out with someone who knows what there doing and who can keep an eye out for things that either my bike or me personally are doing wrong. Now obviously it's important to know how to change gear properly when your riding a bike and this is something I'd never really mastered. However today I have kind of seen the light and it's all started to click into place, a bit like learning to drive or understand how a camera works properly. Stuart was able to tell be what to do and when, so I was able to get up hills and really understand how my gears helped. In the past i'd always just fumbled around with my gears without ever really knowing what i was doing.

I told Stuart to day that i actually intended to do the End to End ride in July. This was something i was a bit nervous about for some reason, probably because i didn't want to sound naive after the inauspicious start to my cycling career and the fact that Stuart is a 'proper' cyclist. We had talked about doing it in the pub ages ago and i knew it was something he wanted to do but it was unlikely that we could synchronize our calenders. Stuart however said that July was a good month for him, so I might have a bit of company on the ride if we can work something out. It was good to ride with someone else today, it's obviously more sociable, you tend to dwell less on the hard parts and it's nice to stop and have a drink in a cafe with someone on route. We'll just have to see what happens.

Wrexham Lycra

I cycled 35 miles (no punctures!) today going to see my friend Mat and his son Llewellyn before they went to watch Wrexham play football. It was great, almost twice as far as i'd previously done and gave me a real taste of what to expect in the future. I feel as if i'm gaining a little bit of confidence and getting to know my bike a bit better. I'm still a bit wobbly though at times and haven't mastered the art of changing gear yet. You do feel quite exposed on your bike, especially one with such thin wheels, when your cycling along the edge of the road. Potholes are annoying enough when your driving, but they really make riding on a road bike in some parts quite hairy.

Whilst my confidence in riding is getting better, it's declining when it comes to wearing Lycra. I felt very self conscious wandering around Wrexham and going into the pub for lunch. In the long pants, which have a kind on vest bit at the top (an all-in-one basically) it's an absolute nightmare going to the toilet as you have to take all the top layers over it off, there's no fly or anything. I ended up using the disabled toilets to avoid creating a scene. I think i'm going to invest in some normal shorts with a padded bit in the appropriate areas to avoid any such problems arising again.