The ride report: 31-01-2021

Fed up with cold feet I set the shed up early for today, kept the window shut and put the heater on at 7:30. It worked, whatever else I may have suffered my feet weren’t cold. The start line looked sparse with only Nic, Jeremy and I there, as the countdown ended and sounded the starting pip we set off and Ian, Andrew and Nathan appeared, and after few seconds Steve P appeared out of nowhere.

Pretty much straight into the KOM which kept the discord conversation to a minimum, the only general consensus is that just after the first KOM summit, when you think you’ve cracked it, turning left and hitting 15% inclines up to the radio mast seems a bit harsh. At least going down you can get up some speed.

A café stop set for just after the sprint was agreed, just before that IanT disappeared? Turns out he had the Zwift equivalent of a mechanical, a power cut. By the time it was back on he had well and truly lost the ride, Andrew enjoyed his café stop so much he stayed there and abandoned. At least his journey home wasn’t too bad.

That left five of us to do the second half. We had a bit of assistance up the smaller KOM and all set a PB that we’ll struggle to get anywhere near ever again. The chat was about weather and the fact that it was snowing again, leaving us all glad we weren’t outside riding on real roads.

Our collective efforts had us all over the line and earning the badge in 2 hours 41 minutes, which we deemed very creditable. Despite the slight relaxation of the lockdown rules allowing two riders we’ll probably stick with zwift until we can ride as a group.

Hopefully see you next week

Thanks to Nic for organising it again.

John C.