This week has been my first week back on the bike since a rather painful Sunday ride a few weeks ago. After that, I decided to take some time to rest and recover, and when you throw in some Easter holidays and the usual interruptions that real life throws into a training schedule I ended up with more than a week out of the saddle. Tuesday however, changed all that.
The long nights are here and the weather was behaving itself for once. I, along with the rest of Team Lard, were invited along to a post-work 20 miler into the hills around Belfast. John, the organiser, is a former club rider and experienced sportive cyclist and he’d promised us an “undulating” loop that headed towards Carryduff, Hillsborough and Drumbo before turning back for the city.
There were four of us in all; myself, Stu and John met first then headed along the Lagan towpath to Shaw’s Bridge to pick up Dave. From there we set off for Carryduff and soon discovered that one man’s “undulating” was another three men’s “holy crap hillz!!1!“. I felt especially sorry for poor Dave, as he struggled to drag his heavy front suspension MTB up the many inclines at the same speed as the rest of us on our road bikes.
After a seemingly endless climb we eventually got to the truly undulating part and the outing turned into a pleasant ride in the evening sun. As we turned for Drumbo we encountered the first of two fast downhill sections and with a little bit of effort put into pushing the big ring I got up to 36mph here.
Pedalling on into the village itself, we turned on to the Pinehill Road. As we started our descent, John chose this time to inform us he considers this “one of the steepest roads around Belfast” and sped off. I tried to keep up but he was away! My cause wasn’t helped by taking the wrong line through a fast corner and having to get busy with the brakes to avoid a patch of loose, gripless looking dirt in the middle of the road that I really didn’t want to hit.
Pinehill Road is certainly steep and it’s fairly long, but it’s not straight or smooth and I was having trouble keeping the BeOne rubber side up. Since writing my review of the BeOne Storm 1.0 2008, I’ve noticed that though perfectly composed on smooth tarmac, it’s tough to keep it stable and moving forward on the rougher stuff. I don’t know if it’s the tyres, wheels, frame, forks or whatever, but it’s definitely a problem. Travelling at over 35mph, the vibrations coming from the road were almost shaking loose my grip on the controls – not something you want to happen at that speed.
Following that excitement, and a bit of a pause while Dave trundled down the same hill on his knobblies, we headed back to Shaw’s Bridge and the end of the ride. With the journey home I clocked up 31 miles that evening and, added to 8 from the morning commute, didn’t make a bad total for a first day back after a week or more’s rest.
Evening 2009/04/21 Route
Evening 2009/04/21 Speed and Altitude Map
Click here to view the GPS track of this ride on Nokia Sports Tracker.
It was a fine evening’s entertainment and it was good to go riding with a more experienced cyclist. Evening rides are something I intend to do more of over the summer nights; they sure beat sitting in the house watching TV.
Or, you know, blogging.
