A few weeks ago two individuals in a car yelled abuse at a group of us who were cycling. They were mad that a cyclist did not pull in for them to pass easily. At this point I thought “Despair is not sat on a bench as in the proverb, he is sat in a car.
Years ago, after yet another speeding fine when driving between home and a scuba diving spot, or vice versa I was flashed and I thought “expensive cars are a waste of money, because the motorway is rarely quiet enough to drive at the speed limit, let alone to speed.
Yesterday I rode with Group 2 rather than Group 1 with TDC. I believe I could keep up for a second time. I also believe that when you’re cycling hard three times a week it takes a lot of energy.My experience last Saturday showed that I was pushing myself too hard by riding by cyclists stronger than me three times in a week, especially after riding close to my max on Wednesday, Thursday and then Sunday.
It’s funny. It is a drive that I have done plenty of times. Tomorrow I will do the usual twelve hour drive from Switzerland to around Alicante, and I will do so with minimal stops.
In essence the drive is easy. I take the motorway from Nyon all the way to Ondara, with a small segment on open roads around Grenoble. It’s long, but easy.
There is a difficulty that I face.
Yesterday I thought that I would get breakfast for free before the ride but I didn’t. As a result of this I went for a bike ride in a fasted state. I considered having pasta for dinner the night before, even as breakfast but didn’t.
The result is that the energy stores I burned off on the two previous rides were not replenished and I started with an energy deficit. The result of this is that I was looking for a place to stop long enough to take a few energy gels I had with me, to fuel at least partially.
If things go to plan I will be cycling a metric century today. I will be cycling from Nyon to Yvoire via Geneva. It’s the first time in a while that I cycle this far but there are advantages to this route. For a large part of Nyon to Geneva I will be on cycling lanes and once I survive the crossing through Geneva I will be on the Via Rhona, the cycling route that goes to Marseilles, if you go in the opposite direction.
This weekend has been physically demanding. On Saturday I rode with people who do nothing but ride, so they’re far fitter, on a bike than I am, so by the end of the ride I was struggling to keep up.
The Options I fully expected the weekend to be difficult, Originally I considered the Tour D’Aï walk but that would have been a long climb, followed by a long descent. It would have also been exposed to the sun during a sunny hot day.
I have a 2016 Mac Book Pro that I still use daily despite it being old, and vintage by the time Autumn comes. The reasons for which I kept my mac for so long are that it’s about budget. I don’t want to spend 1600 CHF to get a mediocre computer that a cheaper computer can mirror.
Cheap Alternatives Like the Pi5 For web browsing a pi5 with 8gb of ram is sufficient to browse the web, write blog posts and more.
Doing the Via Ferrata(VF) on Sunday, and then hiking down was physical. For a start, I was doing a Via Ferrata, something that I have done once, before, within the last six or seven years. The hike down was also quite physical. Combined the VF and the hike tired me.
62 Hours of Rest According to Sportstracker I needed to give myself 62 hours to recover from the huge effort. It’s over 400 minutes of exercise, of which some of it was walking at up to 1900m for the first time in years.
One of the weaknesses of Electric cars is that they take longer to refuel than a petrol burning car. One of the advantages of electric cars is that they take longer to refuel than a petrol burning car. For some people this is a deal breaker. They don’t want to be forced to wait from two to 12 hours for their car to charge. I think that this could be a strength of electric cars.
Yesterday I went for an after lunch run. It was the seventh of Septembre and despite this I felt myself getting warm. The air temperature is currently around 29°c in September, when it should be declining to 20°c or less. It’s warm, and almost uncomfortable. I don’t know whether it’s because I was running, rather than walking or cycling, or because the humidity is higher. In either case we have had summer temperatures for months now, and the weather never changes.