On our way to Audaxing

Sunday 5th of June. Weather forecasts predicted a lot of sunshine on Saturday and above 25 degrees, which at these latitudes, is somewhat way too hot. Sunday had overcast skies and a maximum of 18 celsius in the Cambridgeshire/West Suffolk area, so we were in for yet another grey day.

I had been looking at several routes on the internet to the southeast of Cambridge, area that we have already cycled in a few times before and felt in love with. Time has come to test Lucy on her first attempt to cover 100 milles in a day. East Anglia is mostly flat, so it should not really be a problem...right? We chose one of the very many good gps routes from Bikely (yep, it's a pain of a website when it does not work, but very useful when it does!)

Alarm ringing at 7 am. Oh well, as we say back home "sarna con gusto no pica" meaning you chose to do this for fun so no excuses or complains accepted. Still, we managed to miss our fast train up to Cambridge and ended up getting on the slow one. We shared the ride with a fellow bike polo machaca on his way to playing this unique cycling discipline. East London and Brick lane seem like a good place to practise as shown on this video...they do have good control over their fixies!



Upon arrival to Cambridge, we headed straight away onto the roads leading East and past the airport, following Sustrans route 51 towards Bury St. Edmunds. The route becomes very quiet through country lanes after that. 50 km later we headed south of Bury and into Hartest, were we spent a few days last summer. Right outside Hartest we hit the steepest hill in Suffolk apparently! It was quite short, but such a killer. The route from here to Lavenham was amongst the best ones we have ever done in the UK.

Heading out of Lavenham we were pretty much half way, and I was starting to feel really tired. I knew this could be either lack of sleep or that I was about to bonk. We stopped and ate as much as I could before continuing, and luckily I managed until Cambridge. The last third of the route was very flat with smooth tarmac and little traffic. Our average of 22 km/h dropped a little, but eventually we were approaching our starting point with a respectable 21 km/h over 8 h of riding time, with 9.5 h of overall time since we left the station. The saddles, bib shorts, and our tight culitos had done a great job! The final odometer said 171 km (103 milles) from door to door, including getting lost in shouthern Cambridge...We were both very pleased to have achieved this distance for the very first time and are wondering whether we should think about Audaxing? 200 km is next in our calendar, perhaps even before Dunwich Dynamo in July? 300 km sometime soon?