Skip forward several months. My wife and I had our first baby. Matt and his wife had their second daughter and James was in the middle of renovating his house while living at his parents' house with his wife and two children. Training was not going well. The three of us had never been so fractious, sleep deprived and frankly - poor.
We knew we needed to get out of our rut so decided to go for a longish ride. Like the geniuses we are, we managed to pick the coldest weekend that there had been for several months. We rocked up outside Matt's at 7am on a cold and windy Sunday morning with the intention of riding from Ely to Hunstanton for a decent ride and some fish and chips. We'd arranged with the wives to meet them there for lunch. Needless to say, we would be late.
To make matters worse, none of us were ready to take on a ride of this distance and we were woefully unprepared in terms of the basic skills we needed (how to change tyres and repair punctures when not in our kitchens) so it was a good thing that super fit younger brother came along too. He's an experienced "roadie" and gave us some helpful comments such as: You need I ride faster if you want to get there on time" and "Do you actually know where you're going?"
After about 2 hours, we'd sort of cracked it. We were riding in formation, taking the wind for each other in turns and cracking along at a decent pace. We were even time trialling certain sections tucking in low to reduce drag. Everything was going brilliantly then Matt "bonked".
To someone unfamiliar with long distance cycling (such as ourselves) it is amazing how much you need to eat when you're riding. We had no idea as to what to eat and when and it has a huge effect. "Bonking" is like nothing else: you have no energy; your legs feel like they are weighed down with lead and your head pounds with every heartbeat. You can't concentrate, think or keep your bike in a straight line. In other words, it's not very nice. In this scenario, we did what any sane person would do. We stopped for some cake.
If you're ever in the Sandringham area of North Norfolk, I can thoroughly recommend the coffee and walnut cake at the estate café. It jams you full of energy. As does 2 cans of coke and a mars bar. Matt, so you know is built like a racing snake and with renewed energy he flew out of the car park, hit his top speed for the day, rolled over some broken glass and punctured both tyres.
Eventually, we worked out how our bike pumps worked and set off to Hunstanton and some fish and chips. We got there 1 1/2 hours late, much to the annoyance of the wives, but we learned more about bike riding in those 90 minutes than we've learned since.
The total distance was a shade over 50 miles. Which is approximately half of the distance that we'll cover per day.
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