Stage 2 of the Tour du Nord safely over and done. It's been a tough day in the Lake District but it's all gone very well in spite of it raining for the majority of the day at various intensities, as it always does when I go to Cumbria! I expected to end up walking on Kirkstone and Honister as I am currently running a standard 39/53 chainset when I normally ride a 34/50 compact when riding in this sort of terrain. I'll be fitting the compact before the Tour de France ride as I know I climb comfortably on that gearing in the Alps and Pyrenees.
Anyway, it went better than I expected even on this chainset and I rolled up Kirkstone without any major problems which was good. I thought Honister would stop me but even then I was surprised as I got to just a few yards from the top of the final 25% pitch before deciding it would be better to step off rather than fall off :-) Just walked about 20 yards to the top of that pitch, hopped back on and then trundled up to the top. There are no climbs of anywhere near 25% on the Tour route and I'd have happily got up Honister today on my compact so I'm very encouraged by that, particularly after yesterday's epic. As I mentioned before I much prefer long steady climbs where you can pace yourself, 25% gradients are unusual, thank goodness.
Very pleased with the results of using the Skins recovery compression gear last night. Legs felt better this morning than they would have done without using them. Even towards the end of the ride, which is generally when the fatigue really starts to tell, I was still going pretty well.
Met up with 2 guys, Nicolas and Chris near Windermere, arranged via Twitter, and it was smashing to ride along with them for a few hours. They are both going really well and are in serious training for some long distance events during the Summer, their training is definitely paying off which is excellent. The only photo of the day, above, is of Scott (L), Nicolas (C), and Chris (R), unfortunately it was just too wet to be stopping taking pictures, this one was taken when we paused to refill bottles in Keswick.
So, the second of 2 hard days completed most satisfactorily and a somewhat easier, but not easy, day for tomorrow's stage 3. Tomorrow our destination is Selkirk in Bonnie Scotland, always exciting to make the border crossing. At about the half way point of the ride we will be meeting up with Michelle, Scott's wife, who will be joining us for the remainder of the stage and for Stage 4.
You will see below that the data set is currently incomplete, this is the result of a Garmin system problem I have identified. I tried turning on the Auto Pause function on the Garmin 705 GPS and this has done something to the recorded data which is preventing it being read by WKO+. My mate Mark Liversedge reckons he can extract the data with Golden Cheetah so I'll get onto that when I get home. In an odd way I'm pleased this has happened, this trip is all about trying to shake systems down before the Tour de France ride and I'd much rather this happened now. The data estimates won't be far off at all and I'll update them in due course.
All going according to plan so far, onwards and upwards, on with the Skins before bed :-)
Ride Time: 06:50 hh:mm
Work Done: n/a kJ
Training Stress Score: 400 (Est)
Intensity Factor: n/a
Normalised Power: n/aW
Variability Index: n/aW
Ride Distance: 107.9 miles
Cumulative Tour Distance: 209.1 miles
Elevation Gain: 8500 feet (Est)
Cumulative Tour Elevation Gain: 17951 feet
Maximum Power: n/aW
Average Power: 173W
Average Heart Rate: 134bpm
Average Speed: 15.8mph
Acute Training Load: 156.1
Chronic Training Load: 106.3
Training Stress Balance: -26.5
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