Five months from today, at 7am on June 10th 2015 I will be setting off on another cycling adventure. This summer I am heading South from London to ride almost 1000 miles to Nice, via Paris and Geneva.
After the success of LEJOG and the fantastic support we received, I have booked another trip with Discover Adventure. The ride is split into three sections and you can complete individual sections or all three. The first section is London to Paris, section 2 is Paris to Geneva and the final Geneva to Nice. Each section takes four days to complete but thankfully we get a rest day in both Paris and Geneva.
So far there are upwards of 70 riders setting off for Paris with 30 or so registered to complete the second and third sections. I am one of only 7 people registered to do the whole trip.
Mark Lee isn't coming with me on this years adventure, choosing instead to go on a luxury cruise to Australia and the Southern Oceans instead, (can't imagine why?). But I won't be on my own either as a friend from our LEJOG trip last year, Ian John, has signed up so we will be buddying up if all goes to plan.
This week we received the first group newsletter with a day by day itinerary and details of the daily route profiles. By the look of the information it's going to be an interesting ride, as challenging as LEJOG and with a great deal more climbing through the Alps in the second and third sections once we get South of Paris.
For those of you unfamiliar with the cycling world, climbs are graded into 6 categories dependant upon their length and steepness. The "easiest" or category 5 are just bumps in the road compared to the most difficult HC (from the French for 'beyond category'). The numbers 1-5 were based on the gear a car would need to use to drive up the hill.
On this trip there are several Cat 1 climbs through the Alps, and several days where we have multiple Cat 1 and 2 climbs over 65 or so miles or longer so they are going to be tough days!
Training this time will need to be a little different to last year. As I leave in June I won't have the bonus of a summer to train through and nice warm days to do long rides with George, Mark and Phill. Starting in January means lots of turbo sessions and then wrapping up warm before hitting the road, as much as the weather will allow, and with so much climbing to look forward to there is going to have to be a lot of hill reps and strength work. I guess I'm quite fortunate that I am still relatively fit running wise, but I haven't done much cycling in the last few months so it's going to be a challenge, particularly as I'm having to combine my training with a spring marathon plan as well.
So here it goes then, time to start, Onwards and Upwards.
