A Long Ride Inside

After the beautiful weather last weekend, it seemed particularly painful to have to get back on the indoor trainer this week. But seriously: there is a lot of snow out there. Even the fat bike people are having second thoughts about riding outside.

Nevertheless, outdoor riding will be upon us again soon, and the Ronde will be either 2 or 3 weeks from now. Phil has been doing a great job of scheduling “tough” rides on Saturday mornings this winter. Last weekend he was away so he scheduled an “easier” one (only 63 km) and this week he scheduled the PRL Half. The Half is a challenging ride (70 km, four climbs) but any time people mention the PRL Half, it reminds me that I’ve never done the PRL Full (175 km, eleven climbs). In Zwift, there is a system of “badges” that are prizes for finishing routes or other accomplishments, and over the years I’d done all the badges except two: the PRL Full, and not co-incidentally, a 160 km ride.

I signed up for Phil’s Half PRL, but the evening before I was thinking that rather than doing the Half for the third time, I could try the Full. I already had a volunteer in Perry, so I set up a meetup at the same time as Phil’s. I figured Perry and I could ride with the main group for four laps of London, and then continue on. Surprising no one, Perry accepted my invitation. In the morning, I told Ian (who was signed up for the Half) what Perry and I were doing, just so that he wouldn’t be confused. But after about five minutes of thinking, he came back to me and asked to be invited too. 😮 So at that point, I announced on our BCC team chat what I was doing, and before I knew it I had more volunteers: Brett, Brenda and Dave.

Please invite me to the full PRL. Seems better than running 60 kms in the snow.

Brett

I have crazy friends.

So at 9 am, we had two groups starting a ride, 6 doing the Full and 8 doing the Half. To everyone’s surprise, we kept together for all four laps. There was an imbalance in the strength of riders in the groups, but the riders doing the Full knew that they had over six hours of riding to do. There was friendly competition between the groups and the Discord chat was lively, but at two hours or thereabouts, they peeled off to finish their ride and our group continued on.

Doing six and a half hours on the indoor trainer is… painful. Ian had sore legs and bum, but for me the worst part was that my stomach wasn’t happy. By about Lap 7 or 8, I was having trouble drinking enough and I couldn’t eat much. When you’re burning over 3,000 calories, you need to eat and drink. Eventually, Tammy made some peppermint iced tea and by the time I’d finished a glass of it, I felt a lot better.

Dave bowed out partway: the drive belt on his trainer shredded itself. But the rest of us finished. Six hours and eighteen minutes after starting, we crossed the line near Buckingham Palace.

We were both tired and sore, but proud of ourselves.