So today I went back to ride the Rourke Cycles Cat and Fiddle Challenge for the third time. This time I was joined by my good friend and Iron-man 70.3 World Champion entrant David Brown. This ride raises important money for Cystic Fibrosis Care. It was great to have my cycling buddy back to join me for another challenge. It was the sort of weather ducks would prefer but we still got up at silly o'clock leaving David's at 05:30am to make an 08:00am ride start. Then rode the 53 mile hilly route in a shocking amount of rain. The photo's do not relay the true amount of rain and the rivers running down the side of the road. It is due to the amount of stuff on the road that led to my puncture mid way up the 7 mile climb. But we got there after a quick coffee stop in the amazing Peak View Tea Rooms the service and staff in there were amazing. I can not recommend them enough. If any of you are in the area then please pop in. You can phone ahead and book your table which might be advisable if it is a day for lots of visitor to the Peak District. They kindly offered to take our gloves and set them by the open fire to dry them out for us before we went back out on the road. Then it was a quick blast around the corner to the famous Cat and Fiddle pub before we started the return leg back to Stoke on Trent.
There are a number of extra incline's after the main feature a total of a further 5 climbs which are enough to challenge most people on a nice warm sunny day and all of us on a day like today. Even still we both pushed on and made it over each one even if my legs started to cramp especially on the steep climbs when I needed to get up out of the saddle.
Mental note when you swap wheels on you the back of the bike get the bike back down to the amazing Scott at MICKEY CRANKS who done an amazing job of giving the Kuota a service but then the rear wheel chucked a spoke and in my naivety I thought swap the cassette onto the new wheels and all will be good. However after hitting the steep parts I realised that the rear derailleur was not going all the way up the cassette and I only had the bottom 10 of the 11 Gears. So climbing the big gradients was a grind low cadence and high power. Well that was what the bike wanted to travel at the correct normal climbing speed but not today. I was the Tortoise to Davids Hare. So it will be a quick run in to see Scott when I get back later in the week to have the bike ready for my Darkroom Espresso Cycling Club Sunday Social. I would also like to thank Lorna Dickson for being so supportive and allowing me the extra time to train and prepare for this event.
Quote of the day by David Brown
' epic adventures and ‘war stories’ aren’t made in the sunshine 😉 '
Kommentare