English
It has now been just over 5 months since we took delivery of our Verenti Millooks, and started our transformation into road cyclists. At first it was all about getting used to the bikes, the gears and the clip in pedals. We cycled mainly on flattish roads, or rolling hills for the first 4 to 6 weeks, building up from around 20 miles to 40 miles over this time.
We figured some things out very quickly such as the importance of a good chamois in our cycling tights. We found that our fitness levels increased rapidly, and over 3-4 weeks the time taken to cycle known routes could be decreased quite markedly. I (Nic) also had a shorter stem fitted as I was struggling to comfortably reach the brakes.
By April it was fair to say that we had been bitten well and truly by the cycling bug. It was time to put more thought into our training and start to set some targets. We have been using the Garmin Edge 500 to monitor heart rates and cadence, enabling us to know which heart rate zones we were training in. This is an area which we find easier to understand as physiology was part of our undergraduate training- training horses and cyclists is not that different it seems! As the distances and hills have increased I have also had to pay more attention to diet both pre and during rides, although at first drinking and eating whilst cycling and not losing balance and falling off was enough of a challenge.
The first major target we set ourselves was a 50 mile sportive- Squires and Spires in Northamptonshire. Having worked behind the scenes at the Verenti Cheshire Cat (organised by KILO TO GO) we had a bit of an idea what to expect, however what we did not expect at the start of May was such cold and windy weather! We cycled in every bit of clothing we had brought with us! Cycling with so many other cyclists around us was unnerving at first, but we soon got used to that. The cycling was surprisingly hilly, but with lovely scenery and villages to enjoy in a part of the country we would otherwise never have visited.
The next major target was a 75 mile sportive (Roses Round) in Lancashire and Yorkshire in mid June. To some extent choosing sportives has been based around available weekends rather than ideal distances and ascents. It turned out the ascent on this sportive was much more than we had calculated from putting the route in the sat map, nearer to 2000, than 1000m. We did manage to finish though, and we were not even the last! We are finding that the challenge of cycling longer and longer distances is a mental one as much as a physical one. There is also the challenge of finding the hours needed for longer rides, as we are both busy vets with nights and weekends on call.
When we started the challenge back in March, the idea was to go from zero to 100 miles in a season; in June we decided that our 100 mile ride would be the Stoke on Trent stage of the Tour of Britain at the end of September, which is over the actual route ridden by the professional riders on the tour. Initially I thought this would not be too hilly being near Stoke, but once the route was published I could see there was approximately 2500m of ascent as the route goes into the Peak District, so we had actually picked a pretty hard sportive for our ultimate challenge. We live pretty close to some of the hillier Peak District parts of the route, so we have been able to use these in training. We have no other specific sportives organised over the summer, but have spent time in Cornwall training on the Cornwall Tor route and in the surrounding area. We have also ridden the route for the Verenti Wild Edric sportive which is the first weekend in September. The main focus of the training is to do successively longer rides on weekends in the weeks leading up to the 100 mile route, with 2 or 3 shorter 2-3 hour rides in the week if time allows.
We are currently in the Black forest area of south west Germany to do some more riding/ holidaying. We are in good company as this is where team T Mobile have done some of their training. The cycling and scenery is fantastic, although some of the ascents are incredibly long, many over 10 miles.
We have quite a following on facebook now, which is great as people have lots of tips and helpful advice for us. I have even found myself browsing cycle magazines in the magazine aisle at the supermarket! All in all looking back over the last few months we are really pleased with how we have progressed so far.
