Happy Easter - 45 days to go

Easter week meant a longer weekend to get in some extra training. Managed a Tuesday night ride in the dark & wet, realised that it is easier to climb hills in the dark. You can only see the pool of light in front of your wheel, not the road climbing away in front of you. Perhaps if I rode during the daytime without ever looking more than 10 feet ahead I could be a better rider! There's a thought.

Spend Good Friday touring the northwest, climbing Winter Hill again, heading out to Tockholes, Preston and then Southport. If you don't know Southport, its called 'the seaside' but you can see from these photos, one of the pier, the other looking to Blackpool, you're not actually beside the sea, it's miles out there somewhere. I could see the tower at Blackpool but it hasn't come out on

the photo. Despite the wind, it didn't rain and I didn't look at how many miles I had covered. I decided not to look at the mileage, for a similar reason to finding climbing in the dark easier, it seems to make you tired when you know you are near a target mileage. I spend 6 hours out and felt OK when I got home, the mileage? Very happy to find I had done just over 100 miles. Big chinese takeaway with the family on Friday night, no worries about counting calories though.

Sunday was a classic club ride called 'The 7 Hills of West Lancashire'. It simply links up 7 hills in as few miles as possible, making it a tough day out. Good training for all those Cornish hills in the first couple of days. Very competitive too, which means a race up every hill. Went out early and put in 30 miles before meeting the club and then a few afterwards too saw another 90 miles under my wheels.

That gives me my biggest weekly total, just under 225 miles and in the 13 weeks training so far, 1800 miles on the road and another 130 on a turbo trainer. Just 45 days left till day 1 at Lands End, getting close, feeling good and starting to anticipate the challenge.