Dermot 1 - Whitelees 1

Out today on the bikes for training session 2. Maggies (the 30 mile bike ride and up to 50 mile walk, but I only plan to do 8, Bronze) is coming up soon and my quick runs up to Irvine with Fiona or Ciaran are not providing me with the off road, hill climbing in mud that seems to be required.
Whitelees is the preferred training ground. The new windfarm boasts over 90km of track which closely approximates what we should find at the maggies event.

 

The first time I was out was before Christmas (middle of November actually). It was a miserable wet windy (windfarm, D'oh) saturday and the rest cried off.  The routes are nicely organised with maps and each mast numbered and signposted. I headed into the red section down by the lakes and did about 10k and felt pretty good about it.

This morning was a bit nicer. The ice of the past few weeks had finally gone and the temperature was above zero. It was dry, but threatening but the wind wasn't that bad. Of course being a  windfarm, there was still quite a breeze. There were only three of us going out, me, John and his son and we decided on a simple run down the spine road to 33 and then explore up in the blue "Drum Duff" estate.

Off we headed at a reasonable pace. We would get enough speed up to try let momentum drag us up the hills. So far so good. Then we came to the junction for mast 33. John said to turn left at the bottom of the hill, but that there was a climb so try and keep speed up. So I did, but hten noticed that there was standing water and deep mud through the junction. Had we been continuing straight I may have risked it but seeing as we were turning I felt it was safer to slow doand and take the corner in one piece. Of course I now had no momentum for the hill. And that hurt. By the time I had caught up with the others I was seeing down a dark tunnel. Once we moved on again and took the next bit of the climb I was completely wasted. Luckily they waited for me at mast 48 and I did make it there without getting off the bike, but it was a close thing.

John then took pity on me and suggested that we head back the way we came. I didn't put up too much of an argument.

So I see it as 1 all. Granted I had been at the gym friday night, and excuse I used liberally today. John reckons that today was equal to the middle 10k of the event. The first 10k would be harder and the last 10k easy on canal tow path. Still I got an eye opener.

Roll on next week and see what happens