Warm Weather

I've done a few rides this week - but nothing to write home about, or even here!

However, today I decided to head out on the bike and do a longer ride out west. The sun was shining and so was my bike (a Scott Addict R3) and I headed out with 1.25ltr of High5 energy drink, a couple of gels and a sachet of High5 4:1 to replace one of the drinks when I'd drunk it - I was bound to need more as the weather man had promised highs of 22 to 25 degrees!

Nice and warm with little wind, I set out. I headed over the hills of Cannock Chase and down to Penkridge. It's about time they got a bulldozer out and flattened those blinkin hills - far too steep for an over-weight cyclist like me! What was I thinking when I turned the corner and decided not to go the FLAT way!

Soon I was bombing down towards Penkridge - being a bit portly has it's advantages on the down bits I can tell you. Then out to Brewood, pronounced Brood - strange I know, but there's no accounting for folk. The roads round there are nice and flat, quiet and with generally good surface so I headed all the way from Brewood to Gnosill and then up through Eccleshall to Barlaston and the big climb up to Rough Close. I was chugging away on that climb despite having a slight tailwind. It's not too bad but gets steeper towards the top and is about 2.5 miles long.

Now for the fun part, the blast down from Rough Close - it's mainly downhill from there to home and the bit from Garshall Green to Milwich is a scream. Fast and narrow with dappled sunlight making it impossible to see potholes made it exciting to say the least and my heart rate was up.....I love that descent.

I got home after doing 62.1 miles at an average of 17.5mph and with an average Heart Rate of 130bpm.....then I checked the Garmin for how many calories I'd burnt. I was horrified to see only 1576.......aaaaagh, I'm never going to loose weight this way - anyway, I looked in my training books and found a formula that works, well it does for me as it shows I'd burnt more calories than the Garmin told me! Then I uploaded to Endomondo and that said even more.....I'm feeling thinner by the second. I must avoid the scales though as they'll make me fat again straight away!

Now to listen to some good music - I think Stone Sour is in order.

Oh, here is the workout on Endomondo

Rich