Saturday Afternoon Ride with Evan

Evan often comes out with me on the back of my cross bike. This is the first time that we had both been on the new cross bike together. We did our usual ride going up to Caerphilly on the Taff Trail and back with a slight diversion along the higher trail. There we came across a tree blocking the path, so he had to jump over that. The ride took just over an hour.

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Ride Home From Work

I wont always put my rides to and from work up here, but they will go in the training log - it all counts you know! If I do this back and forth everyday, then thats 60km a week!

This is my usual route into work, down to the Taff Trail and then through the path. During the winter I may go a different way on the way home depending on how dark it is - sometimes the park is closed before I leave to go home.

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Blowing up

Well this was a bit of a disaster. My first road ride since Floyd Landis was done for drugs, my riding had been suspended ever since. But today I was going out after work on my trusty work bike, riding home the long way. I was planning on going over the barrage and then all the way round the lanes to the A48 and back down through Peterstone super Ely. Thankfully I never made it that far - I took a wrong turning on the lanes between Sully and Dinas Powis, but by then Id had it anyway. Id really suffered on the road between Penarth and Sully - I wasnt helped by a headwind and also the gears on my bike failing to work properly - I only use one gear on the way to work and back so that hadnt mattered before. I came out by Llandough and decided that rather than go back down to Dinas Powis, Id ride past the hospital and down the hill into Leckwith. The descent was great, but the computer didnt pick up how fast I was going. The rest of the journey wasnt too bad, but the railway bridge in Llandaff North was hard! I got in and ate loads to recover. Not a good start for my comeback.

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Across the barrage

This was the last ride I did before I decided to make my comeback! It was only about 6 weeks before and the reason I didnt ride in between was because I was away alot on holiday and with work. Hopefully thats not a sign of how things are going to progress in future, otherwise the Ventoux could be hard. The great thing about this ride is going across the barrage. It was high tide and the barrage road feels extremely continental, you can imagine the Tour de France going across it in a massive echelon with people hanging on for grim death - like the Passage du Gois where Jonathan Vaughters crashed in 1999, or the causeway to Le Mont St Michel in Normandy when Olaf Ludwig (I think, could have been Johan Museeuw) won in about 1990/91. The view to the city is great. The only problem was having ridden up into Penarth and then back down to the Barrage, one of the bridges was just being raised to let a boat out. I went to have a look only for another one to start going up. I was trapped in the middle of the barrage for about 15mins waiting for the road to be lowered.

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