Straight up, the mistake today was not route planning. I said yesterday that the plan for today was to do a 50km ride. Well, I can tick that one off. But because I’d not got a route in my Garmin, I was a bit lost at times. I knew roughly where I was, but I wasn’t sure where to turn at several key junctions. And with the afternoon traffic, sometimes that was a bit hairy.
I’ve got a couple of longer routes in mind. I’d like to do a 100km ride before heading into my new job, and so I’d already thought about riding to Blackpool, down the prom, then back home. Taking a fairly wide loop in, it’s pretty easy to make that come to 100km. So I knew if I wanted to do ~50km, heading out that way would make it pretty easy to achieve.
I generally shy away from heading up towards Blackpool / Fylde. The reasoning behind that has always been that there’s some hecka busy roads to cross, and one of which is where I know a cyclist I personally knew lost his life. Always puts me off. The other big reason is it’s largely flat, and I generally prefer the countryside heading up to the fells where it gets hillier.
Last time I was out that way in the car though, I came across an imaginatively titled Mile Road. As you might guess, it’s a mile long:
A real thriller, that one. Especially the bozo who came past me at break neck speed in his shiny red golf. Can’t help but wish these clowns would have a blow out and end up in a field … so long as it happens a bit further ahead and doesn’t take me with it.
Anyway as I got out to Poulton, I stopped to take a look at the Garmin. Was I anywhere near the sea?
Alas, no. I was still about 10km or so from the coastline, and that meant at least another 20km on the trip, not including any pedalling up and down that way. I wasn’t prepped for that, food or drink-wise. So it made sense to head home from there.
As I say, I did tick off the 50km, and my legs are definitely more tired than usual. That’s nearly 100km in two rides, which for me is a step up. My body is conditioned for the 30km / 1 hour rides. Pushing myself to ride longer is a challenge, but a good one.
Tomorrow I’m still aiming to ride, but something around the hour mark I think. We shall see. I’m going to be doing some family activities tomorrow with the kids so not going to have as much time. That may mean pushing out the ride till Friday.
