Milton Keynes Malarkey

This weeks 'big' planned event was an off road affair in Milton Keynes, organiswd by Evans Cycles, with my buddy Chris 'Orange' Hodge. Last time we cycled such an event, we got lost and only cycled a medium length route, as opposed to the epic hard core route we convinced ourselves we were able to conquer. Before the Milton Keynes event was completed however, a little training took place first.


The first training session took place at 'Doo Little', my little abode. As most would have probably figured, this was an indoor session using my rollers. My legs were tired after last weeks 200k audax but spin they did.


SJ and Cody accompanied me on my next session. We ran around Oversley Woods. Am beginning to think this run is too short. Although this course is quite undulating, we finish in around 20 mins and I would prefer to run for at least 30 mins - maybe we should run around twice?!

My last training session was a double-whamy! I started by cycling on the rollers. This roller session was short and I only cycled half the distance of my usual sessions (ie I cycled 10 miles). This was long enough to warm up ready for when SJ rocked up though. When SJ eventually did rock up, we ran the Studley triangle. SJ doesn't know that this was the fastest we have ran the triangle as a couple. We ran it in 33 mins and 8 secs. We actually ran further than the triangle too, as we ran from and to my front door from the start/finish on the A435. Go us! :)

All the traing outlined above was my prepearation for the Evans Ride It! event in Milton Keynes I completed on the weekend. This was a great event. A collection of memories will be re-told.

I met Chris at the start, of what was to be a really warm sunny day. Chris had gotten new fox forks and I had gotten a new Fizik Gobi saddle which we proudly showed to each other. We both had relatively clean and shiny bikes.

After we had been fitted with timing chips we set off. We opted for the epic route -  a supposedly 34 mile off road trek (the short route was 15 miles and the medium 25). Last time we did an Evans event we got lost and ended up doing a medium route. We were going to make sure today we were hard core! Almost as soon as we started, I hit trouble. The track was incredibly muddy and gloopy. This certain gloopy puddle threw me over the handlebars on my bike. If that wasn't bad enough, I bashed both knee's and worse still, I lost a shoe! This shoe took a while to find as I had to fish it out of gloopy puddle. Nice...

Back on track and we cycled a variety of terrain and conditions. Lots of mud, gloop, hard pack, sand, field and a bit of tarmac. Up hills, down hills, across fields, over bridges, over railway lines, past a quarry and through a golf course. Chris was on good form today and powered up the hills and flew down the descents. That is, until he punctured...

We both punctured in fact. Well kind of anyway. Chris had gotten a rather large thorn stuck in his front tyre which we decided not to pull out (and it made it to the end with adequate pressure). Chris's back tyre did not fare so well and required many stops to pump up deflating tube. My rear tyre also deflated. I stopped and removed the tube. A thorn was found in tyre and quickly removed. The tube pumped up ok and so was put back on, rather than replaced. This tube required stops to pump it up too as it was deflating, but slowly. I think the valve was at fault and no 'real' puncture present.

The stops were the usual standard and provided diluted drink and mega tasty cakes. Well, the first official stop had no cake, so I made up for it during second stop and ate 2!  We were also equipped with a bar and had some gels too.

We cycled way over 34 miles. Chris said this was to ''make up for the miles we didn't do last time''. The truth was, we got lost again. Am not sure why, but we decided to follow white arrows instead of the yellow ones we were told to follow. Oh well, we made it to the finish and completed the epic route. Hard core we are!

During the Evans event, I cycled 40.46 miles, at an average speed of 8.4 mph and a max sped of 30.5 mph. (4 hours, 46 mins and 27 seconds were spent on my new saddle! No major back ache or bum ache. Am rating this saddle).

Finished the week by cycling another mini session indoors on the rollers.

Weekly totals: Cycled 80 miles; Ran for 53 mins.