Hexham!

Arrived safely in Hexham at 11.15 this morning after a mixed ride up. Great until Darlington, then had bad cramp behind both knees.
Fine to carry on though and managed the 101 miles with an average speed of 15.5 mph.
Some big hills (max speed 43.4 mph!), lovely weather, great scenery and no probs with stamina. Just the pesky knees!!

Sunday

Think I've figured out my route for Sunday. Legs have been doing strange spasmy things over the last few days so gonna rest until Sunday.

Here's the planned route:

Family cycle

Spent a nice day on the Mawddach Trail between Dolgellau and Barmouth on Wednesday. It had been pouring on Tuesday, but the skies cleared for our trip and the sun shone.

Everyone did really well!

Wear and tear

Good cycle this morning with Jonathan on the route below (33 miles). Pretty windy, but good still.

When I got back, I decided to give the bike a good clean after a hard Winter's cycling with (I'll be honest) not much in the way of maintenance.

Good job I did. Degreased the chain etc and then took of the front wheel to clean inside the forks and noticed a spoke was loose. Then another, and another and in total five spokes came off in my fingers and another 4 were ready to go!!

A trip back to the bike shop confirmed that the wheel was shot, so my bike now has a nice new shiny front wheel!

It has the weirdest spoke configuration but gets decent reviews for a cheapish wheel. Hope it's OK.

Off to Dolgellau with Briony and the girls tomorrow to do a bit of cycling so a nice, gentle week.

The plan is then to do a 30 mile-ish ride on Friday, before my first 100 miler on Sunday up to Craig's in Hexham.

Tomorrow

Lance Parker's got a poorly hamstring so here's a non-hilly 33 suggestion for tomorrow:

Ilkley

Quick ride out to Ilkley and back.

Cow and Calf

Rode out to Ilkley with Jonathan and his mate Dom. Cracking evening despite a bit of a breeze. Lovely up on the moor. Decent 24m cycle.