My legs are burning. I couldn’t sleep this morning because they were sore, twitching (and the damn cat jumped on my face). This sad and pathetic state of affairs came about because yesterday I went on my first bike ride of a decent distance.

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been riding my bike to work. Its about a 7 mile (11km) ride. It takes a bit under half an hour by the time you include stopping at the traffic lights. Its a good ride - about half of it is dead flat and the other half averages out that way. Perfect start and finish to the day.

Unfortunately my two weeks worth of training on that course had not quite prepared me for yesterday’s onslaught. While Google maps estimated a 50 mile (80km) round trip, by the time we’d finished, we’d ridden nearly 90 miles (141km)!.  Hence the legs are a little burny burny.

Till, Ben and I got up at the ridiculously early hour of 7AM to be out there by 8:00. We rode along the old highway which takes a really nice route through some mountains by the side of the gorge. With the wind at our backs we got a good pace going. There was a nasty-ish 300m climb, but nothing our fresh legs couldn’t handle. We had some really nice views out over the river, visited some beautiful waterfalls (mountains and water) and a really excellent descent along a windy road. We stopped at the famous-ish Mountomah Falls, and walked the path to the top.

We ate lunch at about 3:00 and realised while looking at the 470 (sailing dinghy), training in the river, that the wind was about to be a big problem. I’d judge a 15 knot wind (I think that’s about 35km/h, and can’t be bothered looking up whether the conversion is actually 2.2 or not). Headwind of course. We started struggling back toward Portland. Ben (being much fitter than us) decided to press on ahead in order to grab the car if required. Another 300m climb (and the oh-so-sweet descent which followed) later, and we were half way there. I think I can, I think I can. Till and I battled through it, and made it back at about 9:00. Exhausted, but happy we hadn’t needed to call for backup!

We finished the night with a couple of beers at a pub across the road from one of Portland’s many breweries. A super day!

Stats:

    Total distance: 141.4km

    Average Speed: 23.6km/h

    Max Speed: 58.1km/h

    Present Odo Reading: 389.4km

More photos here