Escape from the big smoke

I travelled a little further than usual for my latest ride, hitting the Oxfordshire / Berkshire borders with a new cycling buddy, Ant - fitness blogger, one half of atptfitness and author of this week's guest post (see below). I survived our 40 mile ride on a severe lack of energy (latest learning: feeding is very important) and even managed to fix a puncture. All in all, a wheeeelie good ride ;-)

Now over to Ant for his take on it all!

Guest blog: Ant 

A 60km bike around the Berkshire and Oxford borders – a cracking way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Sooz has asked me to "guest blog" - I toyed with how best to introduce this as a result, so sorry if the start is just me rambling on. I'm Ant by the way – currently training for three triathlons in three weeks in the summer with long-term plans of either doing a full Ironman or pushing towards being an 'age group' triathlete.

All of those things seem quite a way away, hence as well as training through the week it's been brill to find some riding partners to get back in the saddle with and practice my cycling skills.

Our route on Sunday started from my home, in the lovely location of Caversham (it's officially part of Reading, but if you've been there you know it's a world away) and taking in various village locations which swing in and out of the grasp of the River Thames and the Berkshire/Oxfordshire border.

So now I've got the blog going I thought I'd break it down into some of the lessons I/we learnt from the journey – plus it gives me an excuse to use a few bullet points of which a geeky accountant should most definitely be proud of.

• My directional sense and remembering of a map is not as good as I thought – below shows the planned route, ala Strava, and the actual route we took, via Fitbit.

• This was a great ride to practice a few things because the weather was pretty good (we even got 30 minutes of glorious sunshine on our final descent home) and the roads were fairly quiet. Firstly we both learnt/remembered how to drink from a sports bottle whilst maintaining a reasonable speed. Our riding partner Kat from last weekend is a pro/show-off at this kind of stuff but bit by bit we are catching up, and learning to have confidence in doing this and putting the bottle back without looking down at the same time. It's really not as easy as it looks!

• I'm terrible at indicating. Fortunately I only got shouted at once by a concerned motorist (and sadly for Sooz it was her that could actually hear said motorist – sorry Sooz). Left turns are my particular difficulty – for some reason I find it much harder than indicating right – but I was getting more proficient as the ride went on.

• Repairing a puncture is not the end of the world. When Sooz's front wheel bore the brunt I feared the worst, but a combination of remembering what to do and doing it (mostly by Sooz, not me, as the picture below shows) and keeping your cool and we were back on our way.

• Henley on Thames is a beaut (see below). We had a lovely river side view for our caffeine injection of the afternoon and we will be back for the Regatta in the summer no doubt. 

• Lambourghini drivers are arses. In Henley one tried to prove just how fast his car was compared to my bike whilst sat at opposite sides of the traffic lights – fortunately I won (just).

• If you have a Go Pro, keep it switched on. We had a fantastic coming together with nature yesterday when, just outside of Henley, three Red Kites swooped down out of a tree to chase something in a field and literally nearly took Sooz's head off. Was her camera on at the time? Nope! A chance missed for wildlife photo of the year I'm sure.

• And finally, Sooz is a great delegator. Before the ride I'd been instructed to bake cakes (I didn't, and I will not be allowed to forget), as soon as we returned she demanded a cup of tea, and even subsequently I'm now writing this blog upon her direction. She's going to make a great coach for someone one day!

All in all a great adventure and looking forward to more rides soon.

Finally if anyone fancies reading my blog too about mine and my twin brother's fitness 'adventures' please go to atptfitness.wordpress.com for fun times!

Cheers
Ant