Our latest training ride was on a lovely sunny Saturday. We made excellent time heading out past Whipsnade and Linslade to North Milton Keynes. Our chosen lunch spot was a bench in view of the famous concrete cows which were resplendent in a new coat of shiny paint. Thinking our good average speed proved the training was working, we began to head home and realised there was quite a strong south-easterly wind: fine for speeding us further and further away from home, but quite a pain when heading back home straight into it. Our return route was via Woburn and Hockliffe, picking up the Sewell Greenway which provides a spectacular off-road climb on an old railway line up into Dunstable. We then headed through Dunstable towards Luton (narrowly avoiding being caught by Esther Rantzen and her election battle bus!) and turned up an excruciatingly steep hill to Caddington, Harpenden and back to St Albans. Total distance covered 77miles. We were both worn out by the wind on the way home. William claims he was tired because he had given blood the week before. I had no such excuse!
Next major training ride is a 200 mile weekend ride on 8th-9th May when we'll see how well we can handle two long days one after the other. And two and a half weeks after that we'll find out how we handle 10 such days on the ride itself! Graham.