LOL (To Oxford and back)

Seen in Oxford. Top trolling

The Kinston Wheelers Saturday Gang... It is October, let's be happy with short rides.

Also the Kingston Wheelers Saturday Gang... Let's ride to Oxford and back. More than 200km.

Luckily for me all the stars were aligned and for once we rode steady the whole route. Keeping the group together. As if we were good friends.

Luckily for all of us the day was perfect for it. Weather was great (although at the end of October we should really have this nice weather), the route was also great. Every so often I found myself admiring the scenery, full of happiness, enjoying the moment. As the Pope said, moments worth capturing in a bottle to conserve them. 

After two weeks out of the bike and the double vaccine this week I was pleasantly surprised with how well I felt. My riding mates blew that feeling a little when they told me in Oxford we had had tail wind all the way out. 

I still did a decent return leg though. True that The Pope dropped me in less than 20 meters in the last climb (Berins Hill) but very quickly I gave myself a great set of excuses to justify my performance (I didn’t know the climb, it was too steep for my liking, you lose raw power faster than your endurance and I was two weeks off the bike. I’m an expert at finding excuses).

From kilometer 160 I started to feel tired so fell for my tactic of trying to convince everyone that we shouldn’t contest sprint. I even took a couple of turns as we were approaching Hampton Court and everyone knows that if I had intention to sprint there is no way I’d take a turn in the approach to the line. 

To no avail. The Pope attacked something like 500m to the line. To make things worse he attacked when I was at the front!

That’s a yellow card mate. Yellow card!

Luckily for me I managed to jump on his wheel and in the cheeky fashion that characterizes my style I passed him a few meters before the line.

Lucky in the sprint, lucky with the pace, lucky with the route (it was brilliant, thanks Harry), lucky with the weather, lucky with my riding mates. 

Lucky man. 

The ride in Strava: https://www.strava.com/activities/8037888901 

Take care 

Javier Arias González