Last but not least for the week, cycling. Skipton Tri bike route, to be exact. From MapMyTri's elevation graph, it looks like a few gentle undulations, a nice quick course.
It isn't.
The time trial was based on the middle 10km of the 20km course - so avoiding the genuinely flattish out-and-back section to and from Skipton. I started decently (albeit not warmed up enough - to some extent my fault for not spinning in a lower gear on the way, to some extent the fact that it was unexpectedly chilly), but after about 1.5km I was confronted by a deceptively tough climb. Sadly, I was entirely deceived, and a mixture of dodgy hill fitness, not having many gears to pick from, and not picking the right gears from the few available left me crawling to the top of the hill, cursing alternately under my breath and out into the world (fortunately, the middle of nowhere).
I never quite managed to recover from that, although I did manage to recover some measure of pride on the downhill last few kilometres (40+ kph for the last 3 kms). A final average of 29.3kph wasn't exactly what I had in mind.
Looking back, however, it wasn't the quick course I thought it was. At least, the part I used wasn't - the rest of the course seemed fairly swift. I also would've benefitted enormously from being able to drop onto my middle chainring for the climbs. Ultimately, though, I wasn't able to muscle up the hills like I want to be able to. There's only one way to remedy that - more hills!
[unrelated note - Paul Milnes Cycles has moved all the way to Canal Road! I am the opposite of impressed...]
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