This year's challenge is relatively simple; to ride at least one, one hundred kilometre ride per calendar month. It's a bit of a silly challenge really because I'm a cyclist that works in miles day to day but I knew this year it wasn't going to be possible for me to go for twelve 100 mile rides. So metric centuries seemed like a more realistic proposition. It also has allowed me to do a few of them on the tandem which is a great way to share the challenge with The Stoker. And, before there's any objection to that, it's my challenge and I have decided that tandem rides count. So there. I've had some adventures on the way but so far so good, and I now have just 4 to go.
However, I wanted to make mention of last Saturday's ride as it provides the reason for the title of this piece. I had decided that August's 100 km effort would take place on said Saturday which left me with a small time window in which to get it done, especially as I wanted to add some hills in as a wee test before this year's Tour of the Borders event. And it was this time limitation that made the ride a little less sensible than usual.
All week the weather forecast had been pretty good. That was until Friday, when suddenly it looked like it might be a little wet early on. Damp but not bad. On the Friday night The Stoker suggested that I might like to charge some lights. Surely not, but I did so, just in case. And how right they were. In the morning I got up to the expected grey and thought, "oh good, the rain has already gone through". Wrong! It started come down a little more aggressively just as I set off. And by the time I was up beside the camp site at Nydie I needed to cower under a tree to put my jacket on. It stayed on for the next couple of hours. Lovely....
And once it came off I still needed to find some heat. Then I was glad of my arm warmers and I continued to be glad of them all the way to my cafe stop a good while later. It was at this cafe stop that I realised how strange I must look. By this time the weather was better and the roads had started to dry up. Anyone going out now would be having a lovely ride. Looking at me, though, they would think I'd been dragging my bike through the fields of Fife. I had tan lines of mud from my socks to the bottom of my bib shorts. And, as I discovered later, all the way up to the back of my helmet. I also left a damp stain on the wooden chair I selected in the cafe and I had to apologise to the owner. "No problem" they said. I still felt guilty.
And it's exactly this that I wanted to raise as the silliness of this ride. If I'd been at all sensible I'd have adjusted my plans and gone out that couple of hours later and had a lovely, mostly mud free ride. But, no, that little challenge picked away at me and ensured that I went out early. I can't even say that it's ok, I enjoyed the ride despite the rain because the reality of it is that riding in the rain on roads with big puddles and nasty gradients isn't particularly pleasant, especially on your own. Even the descents had to be ridden carefully as the road surfaces were definitely a little sketchy. I do take pleasure in the fact that I did it despite the elements and I loved the scone at the cafe. Not all bad. And the ride indicates that I should be able to survive this year's ToB, even if it rains there.
The worst bit about the whole thing was getting the brand new chain I'd just put on the bike all dirty. Don't you just hate that? And the best bit (apart from the cafe stop)? Getting home in the dry. There's absolutely nothing worse than starting wet, drying up and then getting wet again. It's even worse than staying wet, or starting dry and ending up wet.
