Veni, Vidi, Vici

I suspect most cyclists have a hill that is their nemesis, one that always defeats them no matter how hard they try. For me this year it has been a hill at a place called Brandsby which is about 13 miles north of York. Its not a particularly long hill and its not too steep but given my pathetic state of fitness it has defeated me every time I have attempted to climb it on the bike so far this year. So this morning I set off on a beautifully sunny morning to do battle with it once again. And this time I came, I saw and I conquered! It was a great feeling to finally get up it and it put me on a high for the rest of the ride. Conquering a hill that has previously defeated you gives you a great psychological boost and for the rest of the ride I raced up all of the hills like Lance Armstrong, I felt like there was no hill that I couldn't climb today.

I did 40 miles today which is probably the farthest that I have ridden in one go for about 10 years. The legs didn't feel too bad at the end of the ride, I could probably have squeezed a few more miles out of them. The odd thing when we you cycle is you get days like today when your legs actually feel better after 25 miles than they did after 5. The 40 miles took me three hours which is not tremendously fast but at this stage I'm more interested in increasing my distance than how fast I'm going.

I had a good day last Saturday when I went down to Christian Aid headquarters in London to meet everyone else who is doing the London to Paris bike ride in July. We met the Christian Aid team and the folks from Global Adventures who are organising the logistics for the ride. there were about 25 of the riders there too and everyone seemed very friendly. We also found out more details about the route. I was expecting it to be quite flat once we got into Northern France but the profile for the three days in France looks decidely hilly. I suspect that I'm going to have to train harder than I had planned! 85 days to go.