Day 277 (Saturday)

Took Rosie (Dog) for walk with Wifey at Calne, we walked along the Calne branch line from Station Road to Black Dog halt.


When we got back home I got changed ready for the afternoon cycle ride and had lunch.
Then it was dilemma time, the roads were still a little damp, although there was no salt, should I take the Merida or the Dawes????

After I realised I was never going to make the decision myself, I opted for a MSM conversation with Dave, who said 'No salt on road, take it, you can always clean it when you get back'

So I set off on a repeat of last years White Horse ride, I wanted to take on some big hills just to prove to myself that I had low enough gears to make it up the big hills :-)

The Ride was great, I really enjoyed it, the only issue for me at the moment is when and how to smoothly transition through the gears, I find myself always opting for the largest front chain ring, and moving through the rear gears then I have to change to the smaller front chain ring as the going gets tough and suddenly its all to easy and I start spinning and lose momentum, or I think thats gonna be a tough hill so I change to the smaller front chain ring and find everything was far to easy and I could have stayed in the outer chain ring for a bit longer.

I also found that I am using either the same leg muscles in a different way OR a new set of muscles, when I got home from the ride my upper thigh muscles feltl VERY worked!

Today's route can be found here..., It was a great success, the Hills proved NO problem, the strongish wind although noticeable did not cause anywhere near the issues they would have on the Dawes, I do need to spend as much time on the Meida as I can though as it is essential that I get used to the gear ratio's and the slightly different riding position.

The ONLY down side to today's ride is that the Merida got dirty :-(


I will wipe it down tomorrow when its dried of.

Ohhhh I tried the phone charger I made over Christmas, I plugged it in and started Trackme the GPS appeared much better and positive, and at the end of the ride the phone was still fully charged (and charging) and NO gps points were lost! So a great success there as well!

According to the Cycle computer today's ride was 55.46 miles in 3 Hours 36 minutes with an average speed of 15.3 mph and a top speed of 44 mph! Lyneham had the Temp at 7.5 Deg with a 13 mph SSW wind.