Nice Day for a Bike Ride

I can’t run at the moment due to a case of Plantar Fasciitis, so my usual run, swim and bacon sandwich on a Sunday morning has been replaced with a swim, bacon sandwich and a ride instead. It’s not doing much for my running but it does give me an opportunity to do a longer ride and therefore get some miles under my belt. Not a bad thing, especially seeing as the University is running a ‘Travel the World’ initiative at the moment to help promote health and wellbeing at work. Employees are encouraged to track their steps, swimming and cycling miles and enter them into a website. The site presents league tables for each sport, an overall league table and a departmental league table.

So far I’m doing OK as I’m top of the overall league table, and I’ve put the Sport & Exercise Science Dept. at the top of the departmental table too. Although, the latter is a little more difficult as that is calculated as miles per user. Within SES, two people have signed up, myself and someone else. The trouble is, that someone else hasn’t actually entered any activity, so everything I do is divided by two. Bangor University are doing it too, so there is an inter-University contest as well.

Anna has signed up and has done for the past few years, she’s quite pleased to be in the top 10 on the swimming league table at the moment.

So, on Sunday morning I decided to just do a straight swim, I had an hour in the pool, so in I got and just swam. 4,000m later it was time to get out, get my cycling kit on, have a coffee and a bacon sandwich and then head off for a ride in the sunshine. Despite being a lovely sunny day it was actually quite cold out there so I was glad I’d put my thermal ¾-length shorts on. I rode out from Machynlleth, up through Corris to Tal y Llyn and then up the long drag of the Minffordd climb to Cross Foxes. Pretty much uphill all the way so far and with a headwind too. It certainly wasn’t fast, but I was planning on a longish ride so speed wasn’t the name of the game today.

I then turned right for the final steep climb to the top of the Bwlch. I spotted another cyclist ahead of me here so caught him up and had a little chat at the top. He had cycled from Barmouth and was turning around at the top and heading home. Despite all the climbing I was still cold and now had a big descent before me, so I donned my thin jacket and continued on my way. I was still taking it easy and soon arrived at the Brigands Inn rounabout where I turned left towards Welshpool along onto the main A458. There weren’t many cars about though so I had a pleasant ride through the sunshine all the way to Llanfair Caereinion where I turned right onto a smaller road that climbed once again into the hills and up to Cefn Coch and the highest point of the ride today at 432m. I stopped for a little snack and a photo.

Welsh Sunshine

The descent from here was pretty hairy though over rough surfaces, with some tight bends and was very steep in places. I took it easy and didn’t gain much in the way of time on what had so far been a fairly slow ride. After winding my way through the quiet sun-drenched country roads I arrived at Carno and emerged back onto the main A470 Machynlleth to Newtown Road. I turned right and headed back towards Machynlleth. Once again the roads were quiet and I spotted another cyclist up ahead. I caught him up and had a little chat, but he was stopping a mile or so later in Llanbrynmair having been out cycling around Lake Vyrnwy. It wasn’t far from here though, just another 12 miles of easy riding into Machynlleth and the end of my 69 mile ride.

A good day out on the bike. Nothing too difficult, but a few more miles in the saddle.

Tags: Cycling