I went out today with the idea of doing a 30km TT route. But I’ll be the first to admit I was struggling fairly early on. My pacing seemed off. Maybe I’d gone too hard.
However, it all came undone anyway when a white van man deliberately got super close to me on a super busy A-road, pomped his horn right on my tail and **** me up so bad I had to pull off and recover. Just no need. I don’t know what his grievance was, but I had done absolutely nothing wrong – heck, I was just going straight on with my head down ~2 feet or less from the curb. Arse hole.
Anyway, that spoiled my intended ride and I wanted right off the busy roads immediately after that. Fortunately I was aware I was fairly close to Oakenclough so decided to head out that way and do a bit of climbing. Being ~4pm, I figured it would be fairly quiet – maybe a few dog walkers, but nothing like the main roads.
Along the way up to the climb I saw the Google Street View car. Sadly I didn’t get a picture. Maybe I’ll show up on the country roads at some point in the near future. Immortalised at last.
Just getting to the bottom of Delph Lane is a pretty good little effort. I set a PB of 16 minutes dead on that. Weirdly I’m fairly sure I must have stopped bang on the marker, as I wanted to put some music on my ear bud for the climb of Delph Lane. Perfect timing.
The way I played this was to pace my effort, because as soon as I started I felt like I would want to do multiple repeats here. After all, just getting out there is a worthwhile endeavour, so why not enjoy it a bit once you’re there?
Amazingly, looking at the stats, my third effort of the day was my best. Each time I was 4 seconds different. How odd. That third effort did not feel better than the second by any stretch. If you’d have asked me to estimate them at the time I’d have had them in a totally different order – second, third, first. Proves what I know.
After that it was just a case of coming home. It’s a decent way out so a decent way back – particularly when trying to stay off the A-roads during rush hour.
When I was on my way back I saw I had about 34 metres left to climb to hit 500m on the ride. As I crossed the final traffic lights near home I was at 499m! Couldn’t finish at that, so ended up doing a little loop around a neighbouring street to tip me over the mark. Bonkers. It’s only a number.
All in all then, a good ride after “the incident”.
If the weather holds I will head out again tomorrow, but not sure where or what just yet.
