Easy so far...

The good news is that I think this whole cycling thing is easy-peasy. I have sat down (fortunately on that blasted bike) and created a to-do list of things that need to happen in order for me to have cycled the length of the country. This can be summarised as:

1) Buy a book (“The complete guide to long distance cycling”)
2) Read book
3) Buy bike
4) Check I can still ride the bike
5) Buy cycling clothes
6) Check clothes fit
7) Buy bike accessories (lights, computer etc)
8) Fit bike accessories
9) Choose dates of the cycling
10) Train
11) Plan route
12) Do the actual cycling

It looks like a long list right? Well I have actually done numbers one to nine already. That means we are 75% of the way to having finished, and I have all the way until the summer to do the rest. That 850 miles isn’t sounding so far when you put it like that now is it?

Disappointingly the book described in step one isn’t the first to disagree with my analysis. Most notably, the book has many many many pages talking about training, fitness and worst of all …… cycling! I took part in some of these activities last night, and I have a couple of key findings.

When you first set off, cycling is very easy. In fact, pedalling is almost not required, and yet I reached a good speed. I haven’t learnt how to use my cycle computer yet, there isn’t many buttons and this scares me. So I am running with (or should I say cycling with?) qualitative descriptions of speed for the time being. My speed was good, it was good alright, and I won’t have anything bad said against it, and yet pedalling was no effort at all. But once I got to the bottom of the hill, and attempted to cycle back up, it was a lot more like hard work! I use the word “like” rather flippantly, because it was actually hard work. To overcome this, I might stick with cycling where you have just set off, that was much easier.

I order to do all of this easy “just having set off” cycling, I have learnt that you need to do lots of eating. This eating is to make sure you have enough calories for all that free-wheeling. Mister book says that eating is a big deal. In fact Ed Pavelka’s reply to “What’s the hardest thing about riding so far?“ was ”Eating”. I am not sure if he knew which question he was answering, but in my limited experience so far, the hardest thing about cycling was that bit near the end of the cycling before I got to the top of the hill. Although I may not be a cyclist (yet), unlike Ed Pavelka, I have plenty of experience in the eating department. I have done it pretty much every day of my life. Even better, is that I can now consider every meal time as training. Maybe Ed was talking about the difficulty in getting all of the calories he needs whilst cycling, but I prefer to imagine that he hasn’t learnt how to use cutlery yet.

Now useful informations!!! Dates of the cycling is planned, it will be the first three weeks of August. If you are free visitors and hangers on are welcome to join us in the evening as we ‘recover’ from a day of cycling. More info of where we will be and when closer to the time.

Also, we have broken the all important 8% mark for sponsorship! My thanks go out to all of those very generous people that have given money, keep it coming! :-)

Thanks again everyone!!!!

Will