March 2012
9 posts
Run to the hills - PGT day 8
By the start of their second week the Grand Tours have usually found their way to the mountains, or at least to larger hills by way of a transition into the really high passes. We’re not blessed with anything that could be considered even half a mountain in the West Midlands, but that’s not to say that we are without hills and testing climbs. So for today’s 8th stage of The...
Feeling Grumpy (Bad sleep, bad mood, bad day) -...
One week of the People’s Grand Tour is now complete. The legs felt good again today, but a really awful sleep overnight meant that I was in an unusually bad mood, the sort of grump that I rarely experience or inflict - for we do inevitably inflict our downers as much as suffer them. A visit to team HQ (yes, Fred’s again) at lunchtime brightened my mood, but the fug remained either side...
Feeling Groovy - People's Grand Tour day 6
Prior to starting the 2011 edition of The People’s Grand Tour my main concern related to how well my legs would recover from daily cycling over an entire calendar month. As it transpired I need not have worried because they were fine, they didn’t necessarily recover but they certainly did adapt and after the first three or four days were performing well and not aching at the start of...
Thrills and Drills - PGT day 5
The highlight of stage 5 of The People’s Grand Tour was undoubtedly the visit to my dentist for the second phase of a root filling (the Americanism “root canal surgery” makes it sound a much more dramatic and dangerous process than it really is) replacing an earlier root filling that I had done back in 1987 and which had become infected. I’m probably a bit unusual in that I...
Traversing the Wolverhampton Poseur Belt - PGT day...
My stage 4 was always destined to be a short one, the morning being wholly swallowed up by travelling to and from an appointment with a customer in a village school in Leamington Hastings, Warwickshire. I was reminded again what a beautiful and underrated cycling area Warwickshire is with miles and miles of quiet, undulating lanes overlooking rolling farmland and tidy homesteads, all fringed by...
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Welcome To The Working Week - PGT day 3
Split stages are rarities in modern day Grand Tours. However, as most People’s Grand Tourists also have “proper” jobs their inclusion into this GT are a necessity, many of us weaving functionality into our daily rides to make them easier to accommodate into our normal schedules and routines. So stage 3a may be a ride to work, stage 3b the ride back home. Today I am introducing...
The Boscobel Loop - People's Grand Tour day 2
Yet more perfect cycling weather greeted day 2 of The People’s Grand Tour - the sun providing ample warmth to stand still in, the air carrying just enough chill to cool the moving cyclist. There was no umming and ahhing about a route plan this morning, I’d already decided to do my favourite 2 hour circular ride, known in my house as The Boscobel Loop. Boscobel House is famously the...
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The People's Grand Tour - day 1
Ride every day for a calendar month? For a self employed family man that’s as much a logistical challenge as a physical one, but something about Lionel Birnie’s People’s Grand Tour announcement last March drew me to the concept of just such a challenge. Setting myself a target of riding for no less than an hour for 30 days straight (rest days to be avoided if at all possible),...
WatchMy local bike shop/ cycle club HQ as never seen before.
