It’s been a busy week. I’ve interviewed Monday, Tuesday, and first thing this morning. Today’s interview finished at 11am, and I had no desire to sit and start something, as I figured I’d be wanting a bike ride around 12 noon. However, I didn’t want to sit and wait, and nor did I want to sit and stare at a computer.
So off out I went.
Unlike Sunday’s ride when I was last outdoors, I vowed to head up towards Beacon Fell today. Hit the hills, do something a bit more intensive, stay away from busy roads and, most importantly, dodge doing the Surrey Hills ride on Zwift.
I just needed to clear my head.
And I’d say mission complete on that front – but then maybe that’s because I don’t have any interviews booked in for tomorrow. Whatever the reason, I do feel a sense of calm this evening. Perhaps I might sleep better as a result. I feel like I’ve not slept properly all week – nervous about the interviews, followed by wasting the day waiting to do the interview, or waiting to hear back. Sucks.
But hopefully something good will come of it all.
Anyway, the main point of today’s ride was absolutely the Crumbleholm Road Climb. This is part of a longer Cat 4 segment called Beacon Slogger.
This is a climb I’ve done before, but today held a couple of firsts:
- First time up in winter gear, and;
- First time all the way up.
It’s up hill pretty much all the way to Beacon Fell. However, mostly it’s nothing crazy. There’s a few little kick ups, but nothing you can’t grind out.
Crumbleholm Road, though. That’s something harder. As above it’s 0.82km at an average of 9.6%, but it gets harder towards the end where it ramps up to 12.6% average, with some parts well over 20%.
Then after that, you turn left for a final up hill part, aptly named “Beacon Fell last kick in the balls” where you again get treated to 20%+ from the off, though thankfully only for 200m / 12m of total climb.
Everything after that felt like a cakewalk.
I did a lap of Beacon Fell, and then headed back home. Tired, but happy.
Being the middle of a random, cold, and quite wet Thursday, it was fairly quiet also, which was nice.
I’d say the only downside today was that when I have my hood on up on my Rapha commuter jacket, it stops the wind around my ears just fine. But it flaps repeatedly against my Google Pixel buds. And so it stops the music, then starts it, and stops it, and starts it… over and over again.
Quite annoying.
But what’s more annoying is that in my thick winter rubber gloves, I can’t actually press the pixel buds. They don’t register a click from the padded fingers. So I’m totally at the mercy of the stupid wind flapping my hood to turn the music back on.
Very annoying.
That also explains why there’s no photos on these winter rides. It’s too much of a pain in the ass to take them.
Anyway, that’s me done for the week day stuff.
Saturday will almost certainly have to be Surrey Hills. Or maybe Sunday. It’s time dependant. You never know though, maybe I’ll actually get to do it as a Tour de Zwift official event stage. There’s hope yet.
