Northern Rock Cyclone

Northern Rock Cyclone today and a tough ride it was too. Been a bit disappointed of late in my form to be honest but still got round in a very respectable 5:53 for the 104 miles which included 8386' of ascent according the barometric altimeter data I gathered en route. I reckon 1000' of elevation gain per one hour of riding qualifies a ride into the hilly category, 8386' in less that 6 hours is another order of magnitude.

I'm hoping that now I've completed the last of my century rides before commencing my "Leading The Tour" effort that my form will start to pick up as I rest ready for departure. If I'm honest even if it doesn't as long as I don't go mad early on I should be able to ride myself into things and I hope all will go well. In the end I've trained as well and as hard as I can and if that proves not to be enough then so be it, it wasn't meant to be, but that's certainly not what I'm hoping!

The group we had got together at the last minute to ride the event got very fragmented for various reasons which were beyond my control and I finished with Scott who kindly hung back for me later in the ride which was appreciated greatly, made a big difference. Oddly enough later in the ride I once again started to feel better and I wonder if I maybe should eat less before a ride and more during a ride, might experiment a bit with that but I do like my breakfasts ;-)

Great at the end to see and chat to David Harmon and Jeremy Hastings of Team Wiggle Tandem and I wish them all the very best with their record attempts, nice pair of guys. Superb tandem they were riding and I couldn't resist asking the obvious question and the answer was about £11,000!

All in all a hard day out but a super training ride and a super event again, congratulations to the organiser, Peter Harrison from Cyclelogic who's top guy Mariusz also did a super job on my bike :-)

For now it's into my trusty SKINS compression gear and time to watch England in the footy!

To see the results sorted by time: click here.

Photographs from Today:

1). A welcome sight, the Northern Rock Cyclone finish line.
2). David Harmon and Jeremy Hastings of Team Wiggle Tandem with one of the Dolan tandems they are using in preparation for their attempt on the LeJOG record, amongst others.

Ride Time: 05:53 hh:mm
Work Done: 4301kJ
Training Stress Score: 406
Intensity Factor: 0.831
Normalised Power: 253W
Variability Index: 1.25
Ride Distance: 104 miles
Cumulative Tour Distance: n/a miles
Elevation Gain: 8386 feet
Cumulative Tour Elevation Gain: n/a feet
Maximum Power: 747W
Average Power: 203W
Average Heart Rate: 154bpm
Average Speed: 17.7mph
Acute Training Load: 123.1
Chronic Training Load: 107.4
Training Stress Balance: 12.4