Col de Crystal Palace

3 hours on the road this morning including the Saturday club ride. It didn't start off too well; the ascent of what will be known henceforth as the Col de Crystal Palace (from the Eden Park side) sapped my energy even before I'd met up with the club. Anyway I had time to quickly eat a banana and gulp some drink before we started and when we split up into our groups I was determined on not making the same mistake as last week. So determined was I in fact that not only did I end up in the last group but I was the last rider too. For the first couple of kilometres to be honest the pace was tough enough and this shocked me a bit. I was breathing quite hard and thinking - why the hell am I struggling like this?

Now what happened next is interesting to me. I have been 'training' for a long time and I feel like I put in a lot of effort in the gym. The thing is, most of the time I am trying to lose weight so quite often I am running on a calorie deficit. If I train early morning I will often do this on an empty stomach. Cycling has different fuelling demands I think and it's quite tricky to get right. So about 30 minutes before I got on the bike this morning I had some bran flakes, raisins, milk and a banana. It's fair to say by the time I was climbing the Col de Crystal Palace I was under-fuelled and this probably continued until my old body had time to process the breakfast. Was this why I started off in the first hour feeling so short of power, so tired? Because, after a while with my group I found myself up at the front. Then when there was some delay with another rider we slowed quite considerably, hit a hill and I got a burst of energy from somewhere so cheekily kicked into it hard thinking I would wait for them on the other side. Then I saw another rider a few hundred meters ahead who I eventually passed and then to my surprise I caught the group ahead. They must have stopped at some point which allowed me to catch them but it was quite good seeing some familiar faces from last week. The pace wasn't as hot as last week but we really got some great speed up at times and I stayed with them often in the middle which is just a fantastic feeling - totally thrilling.

So a super ride today, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Again I've learned something else: it's going to be critically important come Etape day, or for the other sportives I am doing, to get my fuelling right.