Lapping On Lockdown

This morning I had the choice between a rest day, or Zwifting, or an outdoor ride.

Even though it wasn’t particularly warm, I decided Zwifting could be saved for the rest of the week, taking a rest day would be a waste of a day off work, and riding outdoors – whilst not quite unrestricted – probably was the best use of my daily out of the house exercise allowance.

I wanted to hit 30km without straying too far from home, so here’s the route I came up with.

Essentially it was several loose laps of my local area, with very little in the way of scenary. Unless, that is, you consider supermarkets, industrial estates, eroded tarmac (technically just gravel in many places) to be the height of what the UK has to offer. And why not throw in a lovely abundance of petrol fumes to inhale to top it all off.

I think I set off some time around 10am. My plan for the ride was to take it fairly easy. Each lap of this small part of Fulwood (my local area) would feature some gradual ascents – 2% stuff – and one 5-6% gradient.

I’m not actually sure exactly how steep the climb was today as every time I hit the hill I was more concerned with not getting killed by cars desperate to get into Asda than focusing on the Garmin.

Yesterday I was debating heading out towards the country side but instead decided to stay indoors for a longer Zwift session instead.

One of my reasons for this was that I don’t think it’s a good idea to be out too far, potentially crash, and take up a valuable ambulance / hospital space.

What I didn’t consider was that staying in the “city” (Preston is technically a city, but it’s basically not in any way shape or form) would put me regularly close to pedestrians. If we are supposed to be enforcing this social distancing, there is simply no way cycling past people – be they walking, running, or cycling themselves – that I am not inhaling some of their … germs?

That got me thinking I should probably just say balls to it and stay indoors full time until this mess is done and dusted.

The other thing that kept creeping back in to my thoughts during this ride was that Zwift is simply massively more efficient when it comes to working out.

If fitness is your number one priority, you cannot beat the turbo trainer.

It may be souless, but my God is it efficient.

Anyway I’ll be sticking to the turbo for the rest of this week – by choice at this point. There’s two reasons why this is.

1. Changing the cassette between back wheel and turbo is a messy pain in the ass.
2. I’m only wanting to head out on the roads when I can go somewhere a little more … pretty.

I really want to “do” Beacon Fell, or some other country side runs. I love the British country side, but right now it’s not a good idea to go on those routes. I bet when I do finally get to go out there, the roads are awful – but we’ll get to that in time.

Regarding the cassette, I have ordered a new / second Sunrace 11-32T from Tredz. I might have mentioned this already. At £14.99 it was a no brainer. One less chore when switching between turbo and road.

My plan is to head out on the roads – at most – once a week at this point. I may just skip that at the moment. It really depends how nice the day is. Sunday is the most likely day.

Also my new long sleeve jersey arrived yesterday so I managed to ride today feeling quite warm, even though the temperature out was a chilly 8c. I got it in white, and already one of the little letters has come off it. Amazing quality. Also due to having oily fingers after mucking around with the cassette, I already have oil all over it.

Nice one Chris.