Today's Bike Ride

[Marco]

If I don't work from home at least I can ride...so with the excuse of an errand in Scholes (one of the villages north east of Leeds) today was my first 50+ miles ride (2400 feet) of the year taking me over 300 miles for this year. This allowed me another perambulation along the new-ish bypass to the Leeds north east ring road, which connects directly to the M1.

Because the new road crosses all the northern radical roads to Wetherby, York etc there are frequent roundabouts with traffic lights and because the new road is equipped with a bridleway/ cycle path/ footpath in both directions around these roundabouts are another set of concentric routes and lights for non-motorists which can be quite complicated. So although one can zip along the fine-grain cycle lane tarmac one repeatedly comes to a shuddering halt to cope with all these. And because Leeds CC has already built side roads to cope with future developments these cul-de-sacs are equipped with the appropriate, but currently unnecessary, deviations for bikes.

And people think cycling is boring!

Of course it would be far, far faster to ride on the new wizzy dual carriageways but other road users - such as BMW drivers - might think that was bit naughty.

And of course cyclists, particularly me, are always good.

Very impressive, Graham. A 50+ mile ride, and a total of over 300 miles, is very good considering we're only in the sixth week of the year.

I can't say that my mileage figures are anything like as good as this, (roughly half for both), but I did record 27.6mph on a flat stretch of the A513 in the Tame valley on Sunday in windless conditions.

In my search for something 'competitive', I have stumbled across what seems to be an invitation-only group of vagabonds and misfits, (which suits me just right), who actually want to ride their bikes, rather than just parade them to coffee shops (which also suits me just right).

Whilst the main club in Tamworth states 'we have a large waiting list' (really?), and the club in Lichfield state you can't ride with them unless you're a member, this is something different. It's not a club or a society, and there are no fees; you just pitch up for a burn-up, so it's about the closest you'll get to EOD in cycling.

It does depend a lot on who turns up, but on Sunday there were six of us and we averaged 21mph on slow roads for the 10.2 miles from Lichfield to the river Tame via the A515, Kings Bromley and the A513. At no stage did we ride two abreast, and upset the traffic, as we were too busy riding an unofficial 6-up team time trial.

On the subject of cycling being boring, I should point out it was only 3 degrees C on Sunday morning when we were riding, and the roads were a bit greasy. My view is that if you find cycling boring then you're not going fast enough!