Mow Cop-ped

As my love of road riding has been kindled by nearly 250 miles of riding on Breton roads this week, I decided to hit the roads of Cheshire this morning.  Having battled French winds for a good portion of those 250 miles I intended today to be a relatively short, easy ride, and consequently took only water and no food with me.  It didn't turn out hugely different to that, but I couldn't resist a bit of the steep stuff.

So, my route took me to Bosley, Gawsworth, Brereton, Scholar Green, Mow Cop, Congleton, Timbersbrook, The Cloud, Rushton and Sutton - just under 35 miles in just over 2 hours.  It was a pleasingly uneventful ride - comparatively quiet, even for a Sunday morning.  There was a fair bit of fresh roadkill - the usual suspects (mainly rabbits), plus a couple of moles, which I'm not sure I've ever seen before.  Being a dry Sunday morning, there were also plenty of fellow cyclists out there too.

The sharp-eyed and local knowledged will have spotted a couple of meaningful hills in my route, the first of which was Mow Cop.  I decided to go up the steep way, feeling pretty cocky after a few days worth of really strong riding.  I didn't exactly attack from the bottom of the Killer Mile (as it's known), but neither did I hold back.  And by the time I was about to go up the steepest part, the ramp just after the Cheshire View pub, I was right on the limit.  Deciding that I didn't need to prove anything, I took the left just before the pub, which isn't exactly flat, but not the 25-30% of the steep route.  And wouldn't you just know it?  Thinking nobody would ever know about my Cop-out (geddit?!), at that very moment a couple of dozen riders from Leek CC appeared at that moment, and I had to share my shame with each of them.  One of them even taunted me with  "not going up the steep way then?".  Erm, no, not today thanks.

I did, however, go up the rest of the climbs reasonably straightforwardly, though my legs were definitely telling me they'd had quite a tough week.  The training regime changes a bit after today - I need to prepare for the both the Pyrenees and my next duathlon simultaneously.  That means some running comes back into play, one per week only for the next month, some more lower back work, and some hills, some for real, and some simulated on the trainer.  Quite looking forward to it.