And Now For Something Completely Different...

So, if it's Sunday 26th June, it must be Bikeathon day. Well, yes it is but a whole raft of things happened. 'Team Tastic' kind of disintegrated!
First of all Neil (who cycled London to Brighton last week) pulled out due to work commitments and I couldn't get another 'Lincoln' rider to car-share. OK I thought, got to do this anyway, so no problem. THEN on Saturday Miriam and Darren- Team Tastic organisers pulled out as their car died on them so they couldn't get to Ham House, the starting point for us. This leaved quite a small compact team- none of whom I knew. So, what to do...drive to London and do a ride without my mates or think up something else? The logistics were to drive down at 4am for an 8am meet-up, do the ride and drive home. Because I, now, didn't know the team members that were left (it turns out at least another one or two pulled out on the day) it all seemed like a stupid idea. BUT I still had the dilemma of needing to do a ride as I still have to earn your money for ICU.
Another mate of mine is currently preparing for the Three Peaks Challenge and I knew he would be doing a training ride. "Fancy a ride to the seaside and back" "Yeah, OK, see you at 8" "Make it 8.30" "Oh, go on then!" And so the replacement ride for Sunday was born: Lincoln -or more accurately, Welton- to Sutton-On-Sea. 90 miles.
It was also a good opportunity to do some time-lapse filming with the GoPro, so that was strapped to the handlebars, set at 5 second intervals.
What a day! The sun was out. I'd got suncream on. Plenty of water, off we went. The roads, in both directions were surprisingly quiet and the road surfaces unsurprisingly crap. Skimming the surface with tar and gravel does not hide the fact that it felt like riding in Flanders on the cobbles! You really can tell the people who repair our roads do not cycle!

Anyway, we made it to Sutton by 1145- happy with that and a well deserved coffee and cake break, fill up the water bottles and head for home.

Now, it's at this point I remove my knee warmers. Let's face it, it was a VERY sweaty day, so they simply had to come off. Ok, back on the road. Within 5 miles of leaving the GoPro flies off my bike into the road. How it didn't get flattened I have no idea. I quickly retrieved it: The bleedin' bracket had snapped! I'd only used the bracket 3 times!! That's going back for sure!! It was now pretty much the hottest part of the day but the breeze when riding made the sun bearable, so we slogged on. I started to suffer about 18 miles from home. This was the longest ride I'd done. We finally got back to Welton about 3-ish. Happy with that and straight into a cold shower! Bliss!

Had a look at the filming- yep, for a time-lapse, it's fine- have a look! The rest of the day, very pleasant, nice dinner, usual family shenanigans and met up with a mate I'd not seen for 20 years for beer & chat (thanks Mark- let's not leave it quite so long next time)- got home, sat down to watch a bit of Glastonbury...and then I saw my legs. OMFG!!! And at this point they started to hurt! See for yourself. Honestly, they didn't look like that in the afternoon- it was like someone flicked the pain switch to max. Hopefully (and I'm sure I've said this before) it'll be lesson learned. They still bloody throb sat typing this. Apparently Andy has the same crispy legs too!