Hey everyone, it's time to help making the Cycling Community more active again, sharing another one of my trips and in this case, it's the one I made last Thursday - since it's my regular day off of work, I have a minimum of two training days every week, mostly Thursdays and Sundays and while the weather was awesome on my last trip I needed to wait out the rain that day.
When it's raining all day I don't mind going out anyway but when I have a choice, dry conditions are better..
When I was planning my trip, with the South Western wind in mind I planned a 33km route with the option to extend it to the next village, Arkel so I could circle back to my own village taking one of the many dykes called 'de Lingedijk' but this would make the distance a whopping 43km, not a lot for experienced cyclist but with around 6 weeks of cycling activity, I'm still a beginner - soooo... that could be too much, right? Yeah let's not push things... that's not the best thing for my body...
The night before, when I was planning my trip, the weather forecast was predicting the rain front would've passed my region around noon, so I started my day easy, playing @splinterlands and making another post for the game to then check the latest weather update around 9:30 to see the rain was traveling faster in real time, great!
Learning about wind is something I just have to experience, I mean I know all about wind directions being a boy scout when I grew up but how strong is a 24 km/h wind? I knew on most of my previous trips, the wind has been around 15 km/h so this was a solid increase for sure!
Just like @friendlymoose was telling in one of his latest cycling trips, the country we live in is great for cyclist, with separate cycling paths everywhere - well... not on dykes obviously... and miles and miles of smooth asphalt, I couldn't help the grey skies so the pictures aren't as pretty as moose's pictures late in the evening, I learned from last time it wasn't great having to stop every time to take a picture for my posts so this time, I put a small digital camera in my pocket so I could snap some pictures while peddling on, and they're not even that bad!
Gadgets like these are from before the age of smartphones able to do just about everything - I remember when I bought this camera it was pretty great is was waterproof and shock resistant so it could survive when it would fall out of your hands, I never tested this feature though. 😆
The first 8 or so kilometers, before I had to cross one of the highways I knew I had the wind in my back and it was easy to reach speeds around 30 km/h but with my total distance and the wish to expand it, I knew I had to restrain myself a bit...
Because I live right in the middle of a highway triangle, I always have to find points where I can either go over or underneath them, and because I don't know all the smaller roads just yet I sometimes end up following the highways until I can cross them at some point.
Not this time though, I've been here before!
I don't like the heath of the sun and my skin burns easily, so I don't mind those grey days at all.
Getting close to the first highway crossing, I passed a World War II bunker which has been saw trough so people can see how thick the concrete is and what it looks inside, most bunkers like these has been sealed shut to prevent people going inside, it's a great hangout for young people I guess...
So I left the dyke, crossed the same highway back again, went trough a small village called Zijderveld and turned North West, with the wind blowing from my left side it felt like it was already slowing me down and it wasn't easy keeping my speed above 25 km/h, this is another long stretch of road, leading to the under crossing of another highway.
When I reached the canal, I knew the real test had started, with 7 kilometers of facing the wind head on and I was working hard to keep a good pace but to my surprise it wasn't really exhausting me, when I got to a certain point, I could just keep pushing hard on the pedals...
Well it doesn't get any more Dutch than this, a wind mill in a river rich area between the polders, in the back I could already see the water tower in the next village I was closing in to, Meerkerk.
When I passed Meerkerk, I was getting close to the point I had to decide which distance I was going to do, with so much wind it wouldn't be the best timing to push for the 40km mark the very first time, I need to be careful not to hurt my body, I'm not the youngest anymore...
Yeah.. the smart thing would definitely be to 'only' go the 33km route, and with 34km being my longest route ever it would've still be a nice accomplishment with much more wind, taking things the easy way is just not in my nature and when my wife is not around to talk sense in to me... I tend to push to the extremes. 😅
So, the decision has been made, no going back now! It was going to be the 43km route, my wife (and daughter) will certainly going to tell me I'm nuts...
Pushing about 5km more against the wind, I reached the final dyke I took left, facing out of the wind. Most of this part of the dyke is East and North East, so finally the wind was helping me, just like at the start of my trip but then I didn't need it, now it was a very welcome aid and it's feeling a lot better being able to fairly easy reach speeds from 28 - 33 km/h again, hearing my big MTB tyres humm over the smooth asphalt.
This is beautiful, right? It's my favorite part to ride on for now!
By now, I have already passed the hour a while ago, my ass - or rather the part where my sit bones and hamstrings connect started to hurt, pretty obvious because I'm not used to these long rides just yet... I do have a padded bib-shorts under my shorts but the padding is mostly on the back but because I'm bending so far to the front, that part isn't protected at all 😅
@friendlymoose is this better in real lycra cyclist shorts or is the padding on the same places?
And then, at the end of my trip, the sun started to shine making my picture over exposed 🙃 this is the final straight piece before I'm home again, I had to admit... I was glad home was getting close!
With multiple personal records, tracked by Strava it was a great trip and I took the rest of the day easy to let my body recover after my abuse, sorry.. I still can't behave myself sometimes 😅
I wonder how Strava measures the average power, most rides I'm just below 100 watts on average but now I had to push a lot harder against the wind and still I had a slightly lower power output, my average speed was just about the same as my other recent trips so I was really happy with that, considering the distance and stronger wind.
Fitbit has a somewhat lower average speed because it didn't pause on a short stop I made to switch out my bidons, putting the full one in the front holder.
1118 calories is pretty amazing and the average heart beat is the same as most of my other training trips so far, at the time of writing this post (two days later) I can also tell the muscle pain isn't even that bad, no worse than normal so it's only a matter of time before I push for the 50km mark... not for now though, and hopefully with slower wind speeds. 😁
Well, that's it for today, I hope you all like the pictures and thanks for stopping by!
Fun fact: by the time I'm scheduling this post to launch, I'm probably out on my bike again 😍