saturday's ride

[huw williams]

Another Excellent ride on Saturday.

About 20 riders headed out over the now fairly regular Box Hill route but for a bit of diversity we turned right after Walton Heath and descended through Horse country before climbing up to the top of Little Switzerland.

It was getting dark while we waited for AJ's ascent of Box Hill but he made it eventually, "It's definitely NOT about the bike" he panted at the top refering to his awesome new Look 486 which might well be the best bike in the club but in AJs hands is clearly slower than everyone else's.

The lure of hot drinks and cakes pulled the majority of riders into the cafe at Charlwood. Peter Munden's doors had blown off completely and looking into his eyes revealed an empty shell. "Leave me" he insisted in true Spaghetti Western fashion "I'll only slow you down." So we did and six of us headed south to the lanes around Faygate, Colgate, Turners Hill, Copthorne then back over Bletchingly, adding another 50 odd miles onto the 32 we'd done in reaching the cafe.

Glorious springlike weather down the bottom end turned into a nagging cold headwind for the return but everyone shared the work and there were a few attacks on some of the hills.

Tall Rob's long legs fell off at Copthorne and he had to be nursed back to Merstham where he couldn't even face the ride from there to Purley without gorging on garage snacks. Stupidly I did the entire ride on one medium sized bottle of PSP22 and just as I left Dave Lombari and turned right into the CW office everything went pear-shaped. Big attack of the dizzys as I missed the garage opening (which is about 7 feet wide) and rode plebbishly into the fence at about 2 mph, falling off sideways and entertaining the workmen fixing the door. "There's a man dressed like a bananna rolling on the floor" they must have been thinking. I had to eat for 40 minutes before I came round properly

85 miles in the sunshine with plenty of hills - you could almost believe that summer had arrived.

[Simon C Izoard]

Hi Huw, you know how to make a man feel jealous! wasnt missing the rolling surrey lanes until your post!
alls well here, cycling has changed a bit for me, plenty of opportunity/teams groups etc to ride with (alternating between two at moment). the terrain takes alot of getting used to, fast flats, a few slopes and then big mountains to try and get up (climbing ability has taken abit of a battering)..followed by dizzy (cold)descents, no cafe breaks for me anymore, lucky to get an espresso with some of these guys (although by the sounds of your sat ride the hardcore elements remain at home still). whats with the bonk training? sounds like ajay could take a leaf out.
Thought I'd let you know that i'm registered for 3gfs, nove colle (cesano), campagnolo(feltre), maratona..I dont mind doing a post review, if my training stays on track.
Enjoy

[huw williams]

Hi Simon
Good to hear from you. Missing the club run and having to put up with the Italian mountains eh? Hmmm, don't think you'll get much sympathy from any one over here... especially when the summer kicks in.

Good to see you're doing the GFs - let me know closer to the time when you're about to do them as we're covering all those in CW and I'll get some words of you. I'll probably be over for a couple myself so we can hook up

Ciao

[sylv]

Jeez how hard can you go on AJ! I know it's all tongue in cheek but give him a break! Saying that, I'll have to query the "best bike in club" claim. It looks a bit plasticky to me. What you want is a real metal bike with the same equipment