Is it summer yet? With temperatures already climbing towards 20C at 9am this morning, you could be forgiven for thinking so. Grand weather for a Team Lard Sunday Ride, wouldn’t you say?
Allan, Graham and Brian the New Guy thought so too, and so after exchanging belated Happy New Years we set off from Ormeau Park for a roughly plotted 30 mile loop into the Lisburn countryside and back.
Sunday Ride 2011/04/10
Graham led us off down the embankment towards the Malone Road and then on into Lisburn via Lambeg. Nice and easy.
We negotiated the busy Queensway and M2 J6 roundabout, then hit the only real climb of the day at the start of the A49 Saintfield Road. Allan, who has been cheating and riding with Dromara CC (including an impressive sub-30 minute TT10 this week), took the summit, with me a distant, wheezy second place.
On this climb a passing car suggested I should “GERRA ‘ORSE!”. Funny, I’ve never heard that in the city, it must be a country thing. Thanks, I’ll think about it, but I suspect my bike would cost less to feed.
We then took the B6 to Saintfield itself and went on to Ballygowan, where I (as appointed navigator) missed the intended turn for Moneyrea and directed us on to Comber. I’d led us down entirely the wrong road for Moneyrea anyway, so another missed turn was little odds. Look, shut up, it was only a few extra miles along a good road on a nice day.
The Belfast return leg was spent dodging slow moving bikes and Brownian Motion kids and dogs along the Comber Greenway, as the main A22 was closed by Police for some reason.
As we returned to the start of our loop I had 32.1 miles on my trip computer, but the others had clocked 36.6, so I think I need a bit of recalibration work done. I’ve been cheating myself of miles!
So a tad more than the planned distance completed, and I have to say it felt quite easy, certainly at the 14mph pace we were holding. It wasn’t a day for rushing things.
The usual full statistics and GPS track are available.
I think I’d be fit to push on to 40 miles for the next ride, which may not be for a couple of weeks but should drag in Adrian the Other New Guy who I’ve cajoled into doing the Marie Curie 80k with me. Hope the weather holds!
