As planned, I downed tools early to go cycling in the beautiful quasi-summer weather we’ve been having. I wore a mere two layers on top, and shorts. Possibly the earliest date in the year that I’ve ever cycled with my legs out, but needless to say I was certainly adequately warm. Perhaps not having shaved them helped. And I wore a helmet, for what I think is the first time this year. Clearly a woolly hat is not appropriate in this weather. I wore a peaked sport cap on Sunday.
I took the X with me this time, bringing to an end a run of 448 consecutive miles on the red Boardman. The X certainly felt different – a fair bit lighter and more refined – and it made light work of the slightly-longer-than-Sunday Twycross that I embarked upon. I set off 20 minutes earlier than Sunday with the hope of being back in bright daylight, and I’m pleased to say that I achieved that. A slightly later sunset and a quicker bike also helped, of course.
Really nice to be out on the green one again for the first time in four months.
Did a Twycross version that I’ve probably done quite a few times; straight through Twycross to Sheepy then back along Gibbet Lane. Knees did OK, feeling a bit sore now but I think they’ll be back to what passes for normal these days by Thursday.
My new DAB radio performs beautifully – it sounds great and even hangs on to the 5 Live DAB signal in what I’d hitherto assumed to be a DAB black spot just south of Heather. It’s just a shame that it only does 5 hours on a single charge (according to the manual). The supplied earplugs are of decent quality but protrude a bit and pick up wind noise – I shall replace them with my favourite variant of Sennheisers.
Annoyingly the X’s bike computer ran out of juice (a CR2032 in this case) after about a mile and I was using my phone in my jacket to track the ride, so had no functioning odometer. But I didn’t really need one.
No wildlife of any note but a very pleasant 21.79 miles. A couple more than I want to be doing at this stage really but having a quicker / lighter bike is a mitigating factor.
185 this month. https://www.strava.com/activities/2177227021
Just looking at the track on Strava, I’m struck by how accurate it is, following the road really smoothly and closely. I used the same phone to track a walk in the City last week and it was all over the place – jagged and wobbly. I think reflections from tall buildings must interfere quite a bit.