Start with a recovery day

I decided at 3am, when I was wide awake!, that I would definitely not try and race today I certainly wasn't over the journey and time difference. Quite disappointing really , usually I have slept for 10 or 12 hours on my first night in Europe and that has reset the old body clock and I'm good to go from there. Not this year apparently. So it was a leisurely start to the day, Breakfast at 8am - no rush, extra cups of excellent coffee. Then I spent time re assembling my bike which went together painlessly although some sort of work stand would have made it much easier. Finally ready to ride by mid day, my plan was just to ride today, no pressure just spin out for 2 or 3 hours just to get my legs going and the travel out of my body. The weather is magnificent warm and sunny, perfect riding conditions. I decided on a bit of exploring to start with, new roads through the lanes and fields, its amazing how quite and tranquil it is in the fields, I even found a new stretch of cobbles only about 3/4 Kms from where I am staying. As I've probably mentioned before, the problem getting out in the lanes, is that the roads wind around the fields in an extremely haphazard fashion and its very easy to lose all sense of direction, getting one lost very quickly. Having done one exploring loop and coming out (roughly) where I intended I decided that the second loop would include one of my favorite canal rides, which I did. Having hit the beautifully surfaced canal I actually started to feel quite good and pushed on a bit without making any specific efforts. My usual rides of gnarly country roads made the perfect hot mix surface a real dream, so sitting between 35 and 40kph surprisingly easy, the upshot was my 3 hour ride delivered up a TSS of 160 ( for those familiar with the measure and jargon), which both surprised and pleased me. So all in all good first day. I can't race until the weekend when the weather forecast is showing 39C, so that should be a challenge. So for the next couple of days I'll do some specific training drills just to keep my legs ready. Maybe a trip to the bike shop to pick up some 'special orders' if I can found the right stuff. One thing that I haven't been able to work out with this blog software is the text editor. When I put the blog together it has paragraphs which we all know help make the page easier to read. Trouble is that when I then 'publish' what I have prepared all the paragraphs are removed leaving just a single large paragraph! I'll keep working on it.