Starting to Train

When approaching such a mammoth task as cycling 179 miles, training is very important.  But training is challenging at the moment since I am riding a rickety mountain bike (I have been assured that it works perfectly well but it doesn't sound happy when I push the left pedal down.).  As previously mentioned, I'll get a road bike in January and really get going, but if I don't cycle at all until then the chances of me doing this wild challenge diminish by the day.

So, to the point! I was out riding my rickety bike home from work, which should be an 11 and a half mile journey.  Yesterday I was cycling into a strong headwind on the way home. And about 60% of my journey is uphill. And I tried a new route. And got lost. And I vowed never to cycle again. A vow I'm sure I'll make a fair few times between now and May the 5th.  So I think I cycled about 12 miles because I got a little lost but (and now the good bit) my theory is that surely cycling 12 miles on a mountain bike, into the wind and going uphill is like cycling about 30 miles on a road bike on flat terrain with no wind. Based on this calculation I would only need to cycle 71.6 miles uphill with the wind against me on a mountain bike to match the Embo challenge.

Now that I read that back, I think I might rather 179 miles on a road bike.  Unfortunately, I realise that large parts of the 179 miles will be uphill and there could well be a headwind.

Now that I read this back again I would like to vow never to cycle again.

Tim

First post

As we won't have bikes until January, there won't much in the way of blogs until then.  In January we'll update how our training is going and how much pain we are in.  Until then, feel free to support our efforts for charity by buying us our bikes (see link below). Cheers.

http://www.chainreactioncycles.com/Models.aspx?ModelID=57227 

On a more serious note, we are doing the cycle for charity, more details of which will be on the way.