A big day of Alps Training
Chris Jones took the last spot after the drop outs so he’s only recently joined us. He lives close to Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire, famous to cyclists for being the start of the Cragg Vale climb and he normally rides with Calderdale Tri Club. He told us that he wasn’t much of a fan of intervals or Zwift sessions and he much preferred to just ride for training, but we weren’t expecting anything like this!
Thanks Chris for this contribution to the blog. You can find him on Strava here.
Hi Guys and Girls!
I know I’m a late-comer to the Alps Challenge, but thought I would share some of my training I’m doing over the next few months to get ready for it.
Due to a very bad car crash about 8 years ago I really struggle with my mental health at times, especially my anxiety. That is one of the main reasons you will see me asking loads of questions as this is my first trip like this so I need to ensure I cover as much as I can whilst I have the chance to ask you all.
The way I manage my mental health and fitness overall is to ride my bike. However, I like to ride my bike a lot and ride a long way so I am a member of Audax UK. If you are not aware of Audax UK, you should look them up and see if you can fit a few rides in yourself before we go.
So, on Tuesday last week I really needed to get a long bike ride to sort my head out and to start my training for The Challenge. For some unknown reason I chose the It’s Grim Up North Audax starting from Whalley which is not too far away from home. There is nothing special about a 207km bike ride for me but what did stand out was the advertised 4500 meters of climbing. This amount of climbing for a fat lad is not the best idea but I noticed that there was a point after about 110km I could bail if it was getting too hard for me. Well the weather forecast for the day was ok so off I went to sort my head out.
Well, “Where to start from?” is the question I ask myself and to be honest I will start straight away on the first hill after only 200 meters, it went uphill and for like the rest of the day that’s all I seemed to do was go up hill after hill after hill after hill…As you can probably guess, it was a hilly ride taking in about 5 (I believe) of the top 100 climbs in the country. We passed Settle, Malham, Ingleton just to name a few and if you know the area, you know how hilly it can be.
As the day went on and on and on and on, the temperature rose and rose and the hills just kept coming. As for the scenery, I have not done a better ride and it more than made up for the effort I had to put in to carry on. At the110km mark I decided to carry on as I felt ok to do so. This section of the ride was not as steep as the hills that I had done already, but they were just longer and longer to make up for it lol.
The ride finished with a climb over the Trough of Bowland and a shorter 1 km climb over another hill I do not know or even care to know the name of! Then a 14km downhill ride to the finish. Not much I can say about the ride itself as I am trying to block the pain and relentless pedaling out of my head as it hurts just like the rest of my body! But on the positive side, I completed a ride I did not think I could do and, in a few days, I might even say I enjoyed it!
And one last thing… wear sunscreen if you are out in the sun all day!
I plan on doing an Audax ride every 2 weeks from now until we leave so look out for more reports very soon. If you have any questions, or want to know more about Audax rides, please just ask.
