mari-musing: youcantbuyland: mari-musing: My Rapha Women’s 100 ride in pictures. 20 July 2014. When
mari-musing: youcantbuyland: mari-musing: My Rapha Women’s 100 ride in pictures. 20 July 2014. When Strava’s Rapha Women’s 100 rolled around this year, I clicked ‘join’ with a certain amount of reckless trepidation. I hadn’t ridden 100km since April, my iron stores were through the floor, and I was in hospital having a colonoscopy on Monday. Hoping the weather (and my saddle-sore butt) would last the distance, I set out with clubathletica on a perfect powder blue morning. We took photos along the way and stopped for a seriously delicious brunch at the half-way point in Fremantle. Although my sit-bones were hurting from the get-go, my suffering wasn’t noteworthy until the 82km mark, after which I well and truly earned my Sufferlandria badge. Let’s say my most hated surface is the concrete slabbed path past the SAS barracks. For all the coasting with my tush hovering above the seat, I still managed to achieve my goal of keeping my average speed above 21kph - slower than last year but circumstances were different. And there you have it: 103km completed along with thousands of other women cyclists all around the world. Congratulations all. A hot shower, pj’s, tea & mashed bananas on toast later, I was ready to pat myself on the back. Hubby took me out for fish & chips and a celebratory glass of wine but I was almost too weary to eat! Not sure I’ll be staying up to watch Le Tour de France finish tonight… The thing I love about the bike is that it makes a solid join between people like a needle and thread to two pieces of material. We all have our challenges, it’s just that not very often you see people post times openly on these events, mainly because of what others may say. Whereas the first thing I saw in the picture is the route. What I love about mari-musing post is you get the joy of riding coming through. That’s what is infectious, whereas epic really isn’t. More bums on bikes equals better people, with stories to tell, and we all love a story. To share this experience with one of your kids, well as a cyclist I struggle to contain my crazy joy when I go out with my kids, so clubathletica if your Mam just smiles sometimes for no obvious reason, it might just be that pleasure shared with your loved ones thing, I suspect you’ve seen it many times . I’ve been fast (for me, a 42:16 25km commute that nearly produced puke and a 4:15 100 mile being hi-lights) to now where I’m coming back from an injury 2 years ago which has reduced my average speed to early twenties. It got me down, I lost my mojo but I read something from kevinscottbatchelor recently on his Instagram which allowed me to reset the button and start again. It’s all captured here http://instagram.com/p/qEo2F1D7eI/ but to paraphrase it’s all about riding for you and riding for fun. One of my good friends ridingthelanes is on a path running on parallel lines as he’s had his own journey, but we share the same frustrations. More Miles and Smiles is what we all need. Sorry for the long post, the natural 5:35am wake up has caught the better of me. More Miles & Smiles - I love it! (Even if we do go by kilometres in Oz.) Thank you for sharing my Sunday journey youcantbuyland as well as highlighting two new smiling milers for me to follow. It’s great to connect with a global cycling community. -- source link