The Big Five-O. And the Big Four-O

I had said I would ride 50 miles before Christmas.  It didn't happen for various reasons, most of them involving cold, low temperatures, rain, more cold and general apathy.  Now that the weather has improved and August 10th is getting ever closer, I decided Tuesday was The Day.

I was ridiculously nervous, despite my pre-event preparation of 'paint nails and make a picnic'.  I reckoned my 50 miles would take me about 4 hours on bike tracks, so I took drink, a Snickers, half a peanut butter sandwich and a beef sausage.  Proper training stuff then.

The first 12 miles was, um, s-l-o-w...  I stopped to adjust my saddle (No.3, the Italian Job) twice and got spectacularly lost somewhere after Bassaleg...  I ended up on muddy tracks, carrying the bike up and down three flights of steps and crossing an unmanned railway track.  Twice.  At one point I asked two blokes who were wandering around if they knew where the bike track was but they said they didn't even know there was one.  As they were eating burgers at half past ten on a Tuesday morning perhaps they weren't the best people to ask.  After a bit of cycling around I spotted a sign and went up yet another hill (think 'half-pipe' at the Winter Olympics, I was going up one side of the valley, down, up the other side, down, up the first side, down... ) and eventually found the route on a lovely flat track next to a proper canal, with ducks and everything, two-thirds of the way up the mountainside above Risca.

After that I vaguely knew where I was going.  Until about mile 30 when I took a slight detour to Ynysybwl.  I had worked out my route on Google Maps and knew it was about 8 miles short of being 50 miles.  So when I saw a sign saying 'Ynysybwl 3' I thought 'there and back will knock of another 6' and duly cycled to Ynysybwl.  Which was 3 miles entirely uphill, the only bonus to this being that the way back was, of course, 3 miles entirely downhill.  Hooray!!

I managed to eat my Snickers at a 'rest-stop' at about 20 miles, and decided the '3 miles uphill' was a good place to eat the sausage whilst still on the move.  All of the cycle tracks were well populated with people and dogs, and it seems the only thing more attractive to a dog than a bicycle is a bicycle with a beef sausage attached....  I weaved a bit, wobbled a bit, shouted apologies to the dog-owners and kept pedalling.

In Pontypridd at about 38 miles I got lost and did 3 laps of the backstreets, which at least added more mileage and the roads were pleasantly traffic-free and full of cute little terraced houses.

I passed a bunch of young lads sitting high up on a wall and was quite chuffed when one of them shouted 'Hiya Sexy!' and then slightly less chuffed when one of the others shouted 'I don't think so mate'...  Still, it makes a change from 'Get off and milk it' which was what I used to get when I rode horses.

After that I knew where I was going - and the last 5 miles were almost downhill.  Which kind of makes up for the first 5 being uphill...

So that's it, I did it.  50 MILES!!  Actually it was 50.39.  Just saying.

I hope you like the 'before' and 'after' pictures.  The only differences seem to be that (a) the sun's gone in, (b) I look relieved and (c) my bike is pointing in the other direction...

Did I mention it was hilly?  Here's how hilly:

It says 80km because even though my clever watch thingy is recording me in miles, it's uploading in kilometres.  Anyone know how to fix this??  Fit Mark - you're good with techy stuff??

My legs were fine (I ran on Wednesday), on Thursday I did another 15 miles on the turbo trainer and yesterday I cycled another 40 down to Cardiff Bay and back.  That makes 105 miles this week - WOO HOO!

Now all I have to do is manage it in one day...