This was the first ride when all three of the LEJOG 2009 participants cycled together. We were meeting at Tom’s in Wootton for 7am so I decided to cycle the short distance (about 7 miles) there from home and left around 6.30am. Of course it was completely dark then. I arrived on time to find Andrew waiting outside, no sign of Tom yet! After a short delay we set off around 8.50am northwards towards Cumnor.

The roads were icy in places so we avoided the minor road down Tumbledown Hill and took the main route to join the Farmoor road and over Swinford Bridge. At Eynsham we crossed the A40 and headed towards Freeland. The hill down from East End was very dodgy, the trees were dripping on to the road where it was freezing into sheets. We took it steady and had a break on Ashford Bridge over the Evenlode at the bottom.

We cycled to Finstock and through Hailey into Witney. This was a wider B-road so we strung out a bit. After Witney we took the very minor Cogges Road towards Stanton Harcourt. Rather than going back …

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Commuting cycle to work on my now regular 17.5 mile route! Weather was misty in the morning and pretty foggy on the way home, this made it quite tricky as when cars came towards me it was basically a whiteout and it was hard to see the edge of the road!

Distance :: 17.46 mi
Time :: 1h13m13s
Average Active Speed :: 14.31 mph
Run.GPS Training Profile

Distance :: 17.25 mi
Time :: 1h13m54s
Average Active Speed :: 14.01 mph
Run.GPS Training Profile

First ride for three weeks and after the excesses of Xmas. This also gave my sore leg a chance to rest, doctor reckons it was muscular although thought initially it might have been a hernia in my groin region. It has been very painful, but is well on the way to being AOK again, although still not 100% cycling doesn’t seem to make it worse or hurt it. Table Tennis does though.

Anyway, boy this was a cold one. Absolutely blinking freezing. The first really cold winter weather we have had for several years was close to its peak on this Sunday morning. My brother-in-law drove to my house and his car was indicating an outside temperature of -5C. At work on the Monday I checked what our metsite had recorded and they had an overnight minimum of -7.6C and a recorded temperature at 9am of -6.9C! We were heading for Wallingford that morning!

We headed off on my familiar commuting route to Wallingford via Wittenham Clumps, it would have been close to 9am when we arrived in Wallingford where I now know it was -6.9C. No wonder my water bottle had frozen solid!

We were heading for Christmas Common …

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A bit of a last minute decision to go for a ride with my brother early on Sunday morning. We decided to meet in Moreton-in-Marsh and he had listed a tentative set of villages to aim for and I quickly knocked up a route on Run.GPS to follow late the previous evening.

We headed NW from Moreton to Batsford and up Dorn Hill to Draycott continuing on to Chipping Campden which is where our planned routes began to diverge and it all went a bit wrong! I thought we were aiming to cycle through Broadway going down and back up the steep hills, my brother planned to bypass the village and go via Broadway Hill. I had planned to go down Willersey Hill to avoid the main road but we missed the turning as my brother thought we were heading to Broadway Tower! I think we should have maybe worked out where we were going and I shouldn’t have done a Run.GPS route late at night.

We ended up at the top of Fish Hill on the A44. I was a little ahead and there was a big congregation of motorcyclists at the top of the hill, I turned right …

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Forty today! This is the ugvx.com banner that Redsmartie kindly created. My grumpy Xbox 360 avatar really makes a statement I feel! Actually I’m feeling pretty chipper about being 40, loads of attention FTW.

Went for a curry and beers last night with Dabe and WildCardZero, just been for a Thai meal for lunch with three girls from the office. I should be 40 more often! Now for a relaxing afternoon until Chowny turns up to discuss websites a bit later.

Nothing planned for this evening apart from relaxing with the family. Ace!

All this cycling is doing me some good I think! Feeling fitter than ever at the moment, 80-odd miles cycling a week plus usually two table tennis matches is doing me good. I finished 5th on the cycling hall of fame on GPS-Sport in November. Burnt a total of 14,731 kcal (apparently), cycled 284.78 mi (458.30 km), and cycled for 20h26m31s. Not too bad I think!

The weight has been falling off me too, it’s really nice when people I’ve not seen for a while notice in surprise how much weight I’ve lost. I’ve lost over 1.5 stone since September now (~10kg) by eating more sensibly and doing more exercise. I’m looking forward to when Wii Fit tells me I’m in the ideal weight bracket for my height, not far to go now!

Commuting cycle to work on my now regular 17.5 mile route except for an added tour of Wallingford on the way in which added on a couple of miles! Weather was cool and clear.

Distance :: 19.44 mi
Time :: 1h20m46s
Average Active Speed :: 14.44 mph
Run.GPS Training Profile

Distance :: 17.26 mi
Time :: 1h14m58s
Average Active Speed :: 13.81 mph
Run.GPS Training Profile

This was a good ride, the weather was a huge improvement over the previous week’s. Sunny, cold and little wind. I headed north from home through Abingdon town centre and out towards Cumnor on the B4017 through Wootton. I crossed the A420 at Bessels Leigh and climbed steadily to Cumnor and rejoined the B4017. During the fast descent to Farmoor and past the reservoir I remembered I had to cross the Swinford toll-bridge and I had no money with me. I hope cyclists were free otherwise I was going to have to blag my way across. It was free!

I cycled into Eynsham and turned southwest on the B4449 as far as Sutton where at last I could join quiet country lanes. Sutton was the birthplace of my paternal grandfather and he lived in Sutton and Stanton Harcourt as a boy. There are several relatives buried in the churchyard in Stanton Harcourt. Just a short distance later I cycled through the tiny hamlet of West End which was where my paternal grandmother lived as a girl. I continued along the long curve through Northmoor and into Standlake.

A short distance on the A415 followed before I turned towards Aston. I …

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I had a 50 mile route planned for this Sunday but the weather was so atrocious that I quickly altered my plans and took a 30 mile moderate route out of my Philips book of cycle routes. I knew the wind was from the north so I picked a nearby route that had most of the north component at the beginning.

I drove to Lambourn on the Berkshire Downs and parked up. It was sleeting quite heavily, the car was telling me it was 3ºC outside. I sat in the car for a few minutes and then decided to go for it. It was cold. The first few miles uphill to the Ridgeway into the wind were pretty tough, the sleet stung my face, the roads were flooded, it was pretty dull (I had my lights on). Once I went down Blowingstone Hill and across the B4507 to Kingston Lisle it wasn’t so bad. In the Vale of White Horse the roads are flat and the wind was less of an issue. The sleet started to ease too. I soon cycled through Uffington and onto the Longcot road where I made a bit of a mistake. The railway underbridge was …

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Usual commuting route with an added loop at the end of the morning through Wallingford which adds about a mile to the total distance. On the way home I was really cycling well so added on a loop via Drayton and Milton which adds about 1.5 miles to the total distance. Really noticing the fitness improvements now.

Distance :: 18.13 mi
Time :: 1h14m27s
Average Active Speed :: 14.61 mph
Run.GPS Training Profile

Distance :: 18.72 mi
Time :: 1h17m04s
Average Active Speed :: 14.57 mph
Run.GPS Training Profile