For the past few months I have relied entirely on the commute to and from the office to build up a bit of bike fitness in readiness for the North to South Challenge in October for the Christina Noble Children’s Foundation. I have done the commute countless times and I am pleased to say that bike fitness is certainly improved with the day to day getting to the office being a lot less of a stress than it used to be. The only thing is, in the challenge, the distances to be covered each day are a fair bit further than the commute… 60-100km a day, day after day. oh and there are hills. urgh.
The time has now come to head out on longer distances and to work on my pathetic ability to ‘climb’. Working these kinds of rides into the weekends generally means forgoing some family and down time, maybe not getting to all the chores (maybe missing the chores isn’t tooooo bad haha) but they still need to be done. My wife isn’t ever really 100% happy with this (shes says she is but I can tell) but she is always 100% supportive, who’s a very lucky bloke?
I squeezed my first ‘real’ training ride into cycling up to the hills before a delightful picnic by an open fire organised by my wife. She drove my girls and one of their friends up, made some awesome sandwiches, packed an esky with cool drinks, packed chairs and a picnic mat and I rode up to meet them. She is a champion and I am indeed one very lucky bloke.
I need your support as well to make my target and get to complete the challenge. I would be incredibly grateful if you could manage to Donate now.
Awesome little web app makes the video below from using strava data, think tour de france flyover map… only slower, much, much slower haha!