My first twenty miler. Now my second twenty miler as well!

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I know many of you will do this before breakfast but this was a big one for me - My first twenty mile ride.

Most of it was along combined public footpaths/cycleways so my average speed wasn't very fast. Being a Sunday, there were a lot of people about so the bell got a good airing to alert slowbies that I was behind them.

I Stopped a couple of times to take some pictures and drink some water but then some total dingbat on a bike moved directly into my path right at the bottom of a hill forcing me to brake down to a stop very quickly - Because I'd been giving it some, I was in a high gear so I ended up walking up the hill because I couldn't get the momentum going to be able to change down the gears to something I could actually pedal. He was very apologetic but must have been either deaf, stupid, ignorant, or all three because I was dinging away like mad as I approached him so that he'd look up and keep clear *sigh*. Apart from that, I didn't stop at all.

 

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I don't know where that max speed has come from, I can't find it as I scroll through the ride on Strava and I don't remember going that fast anywhere. I suppose I could have but I just don't recall it.

 

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I'd already done that but couldn't find it - I've just zoomed right in to see where it's logged and it's clearly a GPS blip as that bit is flat and the trace thinks I've just leaped from the track over to the road.

 

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What was your GPS device?

Strava running on my phone, in my pocket. I'm going to be getting a Garmin 520 which I'll nail on the handlebars.

On the being stuck in a high gear thing - you could have just stood by the bike, lifted the back wheel, and changed down whilst turning the pedals with a foot or hand.

Or stay on the bike with one foot on the ground, change gear, put the front brake on and lean forward to lift the rear wheel, then turn the pedals over with your other foot.

Easier with clipless pedals, but doable on flats.

Good shout lads, that's something so obvious but it just doesn't go through the mind at the time.

 

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Well done dude,i remember my first 20,only had my road bike a day with clip on shoes,the next day i done a 50 miler,was a eye opener to me and was not prepared one bit,got the same ride coming up in 2 weeks,i now know what to expect and will be 100% prepared

Heh, no plans to do a fifty mile ride just yet but I'm sure it'll come.

...and was dead for about a fortnight.

Heh heh, I'm fine today. If it's going to hit me, it'll be tomorrow.

I remember being amazed I could even ride that far in one go.

I knew I could do it, I did eighteen miles last weekend. It was a nice feeling though. I did plan my route on purpose to be particularly flat

 

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My Garmin arrived on Thursday and I fitted it all to the bike yesterday so this morning I went for a ride. I made the stupid mistake of pausing it to make a couple of changes to the settings and forgot to restart it for a couple of miles so this is shorter than it should be. Is there an auto-pause/resume hidden in the settings somewhere?

A very similar route to last weekend, I just went further by road to start with to get a greater distance away along the sea front. Dreadful headwind for a big chunk of this but then of course I benefitted from the tailwind on the return part of the ride.

It's amazing how different things report different calorie burns. Garmin Connect and Apple workout both say over 1200 but Strava says 540. The Garmin has speed, cadence, GPS and the heart rate strap and Apple workout has GPS and the wrist HRM.

Could easily have ridden further because I was far from exhausted but I've got things to do today.

 

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Have done, thanks. You'll see the big stretch as a long straight line where I was paused *oops*