First report.

OK,

this weekend I did two longish rides. One on my own of about 70km and another one with some friends of about 65 kilometres. The second one was quite tough as it involved the total climbing of about 1,100 metres !!

I did these in order to give myself a starting point and see where I am. On the one hand I am happy that I feel good. I do not feel tired now and the legs are fantastic and ready to take on some more !! On the other hand though, these rides showed to me two weaknesses that I have already thought about but I need to address. One is back pain and the other one is a sore ...behind.

After the 40k mark the lower back started to ache. It was the lower right just above the hip. It felt like muscle pain and as ride progressed the pain grew and grew. I really need to strenghten my back muscles as they will be called to support my weight for more than 10 hours in February. Perhaps the pain is posture related so I will need to explore my positioning on the bike. Perhaps a less than perfect position is not noticable on a 30 to 40 kilometre ride but on a 200k one, every millimitre may matter !!

My ....behind also hurt a lot. Thank god it was not numbness of the 'softer parts' but pain near the sit bones. Again practice will strenghten the area but I will also need to invest on high quality clothing and perhaps a better saddle. Anyway the good thing is that I now have good excuse to spend money to dress up my Spanish Lady !!

I will need to correct these two issues as it will be very dissapointing ot have the same sort of pains, knowing that there will be another 160km to go !!

The plan for this week will be to to a low intensity ride for about one hour every day. I will start playing around with the postion of the saddle (fore / aft, up / down) and will even try my MTB saddle which seems to be much more comfortable. In addition I will do some ab and lower back work at home.