Background

After a long and not entirely unpleasant winter of drinking wine and watching TV we decided we needed a new challenge to encourage us to get outside and do some exercise. Not wishing to do things by halves we decided on the 1000 mile bike ride from one end of the country to the other.
The motivation, or rather dread, that the bike ride has inspired has meant we have been fairly busy getting on our bikes to get some training miles under our wheels. Although we both feel fitter, the training hasn’t quite instilled the confidence we had hoped it would; rather it has demonstrated that it will be more of a task than we first thought. Seventy miles a day for two consecutive days was tiring and we are trying not to think that we will have to average the same mileage for 15 consecutive days! Still, just like the pro cyclists training for the Tour De France, we are hoping to ‘ride in to fitness’.