A Day of firsts...

First time meeting some members of the CTC, my first ride to Honiton and our first time over the new bridge to the Science Park...

Today dawned grey and threatening and as we joined Kirby, Sue and Mike to ride out and meet the rest of the group, we were all clad in our finest waterproofs, but before we even made it to the start, we were already stripping off our waterproofs and luckily didn't need them again.

A large group had gathered at the airport, surprising given the other events going on today. A special shout out to Steph - hope you got on ok with your 100 mile ride today!!

I'd love to tell you where we went today, but I honestly have no idea! All I know is that we stopped at Escot for coffee where I had an amazing piece of treacle tart that set me up for the rest of the day. Then far quicker than I expected, we had arrived in Honiton for lunch. We sat outside the Church on some handily provided benches and enjoyed the sunshine whilst we tucked into our packed lunches.

After lunch the group split, with the keener members heading on to find more 'gentle climbs' and 'wonderful views from the ridge' whilst we opted to join Mike and Sue and head back home. We were definitely tiring and our progress was slow but steady on the hills, but after Daisy Mount we had a mostly downhill ride back into Exeter. The gentle climb up Blackhorse Lane proved a bit of a struggle, but a quick stop at the new bridge and finding ourselves on more familiar territory closer to home spurred us on to the finish.

We arrived home to glorious sunshine in the back garden (amazing, as our garden never seems to get any sun!) and found we had clocked up 46 miles. Not bad for our second training ride! We're halfway to achieving our 90 mile target...although I somehow suspect the second 45 miles will be far tougher than the first!

Training - Day 1

When we finished our London to Paris Challenge, I said I never wanted to do anything quite that intense again. Cycling 80 miles in a day is too much as you have to pedal all day and you don't get to stop and take time to see the places you're cycling through. So, when I was invited to do the 90 mile London Ride of Champions, what did I say? That's a silly idea - it involves cycling in London, which I hated, a 90 mile gruelling ride that will be tackled by serious athletes during the Olympics and it goes up the infamous Box Hill, which is a very high up hill in the North Downs. That's just daft! Well, actually, for some reason it seemed like a good idea at the time and I said yes!

On the plus side, we'll be reunited with our good friends Jai and Duff who we met on the London to Paris cycle ride, and our other London to Paris cycle team member Kate has been persuaded to join us too...hoorah!

It's also a great excuse to raise some extra money for charity. As many of you will know, Ant has spent a great deal of time helping me to fundraise for the Deaf Academy. So, this time, I'm helping to support a charity Ant is involved with. In October, Ant will be heading off to South Africa with a team of people from work to do some much needed maintenance work at a Children's Home outside of Johannesburg. You can read more about his trip here:
http://www.charitygiving.co.uk/anthoneystrowger

The Bikes are ready for the ride!

For Day 1 of our training, we headed out to Bickleigh. This was the destination of our first training ride for London to Paris, but this time around, we added in some hills, just for fun! We went out through Cowley, Upton Pyne and Thorverton. I narrowly avoided a slightly spooked horse and we followed some baby birds running down a lane for some while - possibly tiny pheasants. At Bickleigh, we encountered our only rain of the trip, but huddling under a brolly in the garden we kept quite dry. We returned via Silverton and Killerton and stopping for a quick comfort break in Killerton we chatted to a photographer who turned out to be a cyclist in disguise! A keen tourer who has completed Lands End to John O'Groats twice and said his favourite trip was a one month cycling round Japan. One to add to the 'to do' list!

A quick snack stop in Thorverton

Fearing the weather was closing in, we made a hasty dash back towards Stoke Canon where we joined the main road. Not the best road for cycling on, but it was made more interesting by a stream of classic cars passing by. Heading back into Exeter a van caused us both to take a sharp intake of breath as he overtook rather to closely for comfort, but luckily that was the only traumatic incident in an otherwise pleasant cycle ride.

It was great to be back on the bikes and wonderful to be back in a country where cyclists say hello to other cyclists. On our recent trip to Canada we found this wasn't the case and cycling without these cheery 'hellos' just isn't the same! Only a 30 mile ride today, but it did include some hills and I'm happy that this was a good start to getting in shape for our Olympic Challenge.