Winter is Back!

It seems that I was wrong about spring being here! A week after writing about getting sunburnt and temperatures being in the twenties today it was a question of fighting through the snow. I went on a clubrun today with the Wheelers up into the Peaks and most of the roads had only been cleared of snow yesterday. In fact on one minor road we ended up trekking through about a foot of snow, luckily it wasn't too far to the next main road. I suppose we should have expected it with the road being between the second highest pub in England and the highest village.

We managed to get a bit of spectating/supporting of our riders in the Buxton Mountain Time Trial up at Flash, although I spent most of it fixing a puncture I had somehow picked up whilst pushing my bike through the snow. It's never particularly fun having to fix a puncture at the side of the road but it was made more bearable by it being immediately before our cafe stop and having the knowledge that a bacon butty and a coffee were awaiting me.

Today was day 3 of my 7 day training block I'm doing in order to get used to riding back to back for a week and consisted of lots of hills over 79 miles. Days one and two were shorter affairs, the first being a few loops around a local circuit in Birch in order to avoid the snowy and windy hills. Yesterday I ventured into the hills north of Manchester only to find that one of the hills on my route was closed, not due to snow but because they are still resurfacing it. Given that it gets up to 25% at it's steepest maybe it was a blessing in disguise.

Tomorrow will be a shorter ride at an easier pace in order to help me recover from today's efforts. Sunday will again be a short ride fit in around watching probably the biggest one day race in cycling, the Paris-Roubaix, on tv before doing another longer ride in the Peaks on Monday. It is sobering to think that the mileage I have done over the last three days amounts to little more than one day's riding on the LEJoG, a reminder if any were needed how much of a challenge the ride will be.

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