Nothing to worry about!

Just had a lovely weekend away in the nearby Spanish mountains with my local cycle buddy Mike Wild, again fully loaded to simulate Italian touring conditions. The weights were: 

Rider=81kg
Panniers, Front Box, Clothing and Water Bottles = 20kg
Bike=15kg
Total: 116kg

Here was the detailed outcome:

	Start	Moving Time	Elapsed Time	Stops	Distance (miles)	Distance (km)	Elevation Gain (feet)	Elevation Gain (metres)	Avg Speed (mph)	Max Speed (mph)	Avg HR	Max HR	Calories	Average Gradient
Day 1 - Yavanna to Celanova	Sat, Jul 14, 2012 7:47	08:04	10:07	02:03	79.3	126.8	7,364	2,245	9.9	37.3	123	164	6,995	1.76%
Day 2 - Celanova to Yavanna	Sun, Jul 15, 2012 8:06	07:17	09:20	02:03	77.1	123.3	6,481	1,976	10.6	37.5	124	160	5,577	1.59%
Total		15:21	19:28	04:07	156.3	250.1	13,845	4,221	10.3	37.5	123	164	12,572	1.68%

What is interesting is that both these days were harder than the hardest day in Italy, and I found them fine, so that's good. The average speed riding up and down all day in the mountains (10.3 mph) is 2mph slower than my speed in undulating conditions as recorded in the last blog entry, so we need to allow for that.

Profile and Photos to follow:

Mark's First "Dress Rehearsal" Ride

I loaded my panniers with 3 five litre water bottles (15kg of ballast) and set off at 8am this morning to ride a day similar to what we will experience in Italy, to see what conclusions I could draw from it.

In summary, I averaged 11.3mph over 5:30 hours covering 63 miles. It was very hilly for about half the ride and I did have a stiff headwind heading up the coast. There was also an easy flat hour following a river. So all in all quite representative of Italy. The main difference is that I didn't stop at all, and did feel my energy fading after 4 hours. Up to that point I had been averaging 12.4mph and I think a lunch stop would have been very beneficial. So I think I could plan on a 12mph average in terms of calculating arrival times, asuming a lunch break to get the energy levels up.

The other thing about today was that I checked today's average gradient against the daily gradients in Italy and there are only three days which are slightly hillier that this ride today, and only two days which are much hillier. I find that very encouraging.

Here's my Dawes fully laden for the first time since the French trip last year - felt good!