Long Hilly Ride. . . . Very Hilly. . . .

A week on from the Alsager 5 road race (running of course!) and I have had quite a mellow training week. On the Monday (day after the race) I trotted into the garage for a recover spin on the turbo and hit those good Watts for the GN session. Tuesday was an easy spin and some run drills. Wed was an quick jog and rollers as I was taking a few days off work to spend time with Ceebs. So not much training at all Wed & Thurs. And no training at all thanks to being parked on the M6 for 2 hours going nowhere. But today I ventured out for a long hilly ride with Chris, Si and Ian. I bumped into these guys a few weeks ago when I was riding alone. They are kind of affiliated to NTC - well, a few are! Chris and Si are training for IM Lanzarote. Hence, they are hitting the long hilly rides whenever the weather allows. Today, it was ok - the calm before the storm, I suspect. We completed 90K+ and my climbing hit 1880m for the ride. My legs are pooped, as I am short of any endurance rides over the last 12 months really. Some more rides like today and my form should come on nicely for the longer Duathlons I have planned. We found ourselves in the Peaks National Park today, which, of course is my old stomping ground from my time living in Whiston around 2010 - 2015. This was the route today:

I was struggling for the last hour of this ride but at least I did not totally explode! Not been able to do much apart from sit down since getting home. Recover and get stronger!