Another brief update.

After 3 commutes at the end of March I added in another ride on Sunday (1 April) with Noel. We went down to Evesham which is normally a good 60+ mile round trip. Weather was OK (shorts) but needed a few layers on for the first few hours. Noel & I took reasonable turns at the front and as a result got down to Evesham and back to Astwood Bank at about 17.4mph average which was very pleasing. At that point I wanted to detour through to Tardebigge and on and Noel had had enough, so we split at that point. I pressed on and added a few extra Strava segments to the route and despite doing a total of 72.9 miles for the morning still got the average at 17.1. The additional segments were the "Sheltwood Stretcher" (a drag over a mile or so) and Icknield Street Climb, and on both of these set the 2nd fastest time overall, so was well pleased.

Didn't get a great deal of chance for riding to work the week commencing 4 April other than the Friday (we are heathens and work on Good Friday) which was a bitterly cold morning (-4Deg C on my Garmin 800).

However the weather perked up on the Saturday and I went out for a blast to get as many segments as possible in the afternoon. Did a 30 mile loop at 19mph and made a number of improvements on a 4-5 segments and felt pretty good as well. Despite seeing strong signs of improved pace I can see KOM slipping away now as more people are signing on and its getting pretty competitive out there - sometimes the KOM don't stand for more than 12-24hrs when the weather is good at the weekend and there are a few ((Box Trees Lane, Kineton Lane, Pool Head Lane etc) where the competition is intense. Kineton Lane has seen a drop if about 20 seconds of time over the past 2 weeks with 4-5 people holding the KOM.

Finally, as I am off on holiday the week after Easter I have been nipping out in some of the mornings for some miles. On 11 April I decided to do some hill repeats and went over to Rose Hill with the intention to do at least 2. The first ascent was hard, but I felt OK afterwards and went to a 2nd loop, which actually seemed to hurt less. On completing that 2nd loop I decided to go for a 3rd loop and this was no worse that the 2nd. I felt I could have done a 4th loop, but probably would have struggled a lot on the way home so glad I didn't. The first ascent was 3:45 and the second and third were both 3:56. The 3:45 was my 2nd fastest time ever and the fact that the next 2 ascents were the same time was excellent for me. I think that I should try and push a lot harder on this hill now.

I think that all the miles slogged out over the Winter are starting to pay off. Whilst my main target this year is 5000 miles again, I also want to increase the average speed to be generally 18mph for most rides up to 60-70 miles. There's no structure to this or specific plan but I believe it will be possible on a couple of days - weather and overall distance dependant and probably needing at least another person to share the time at the front. Les hope so. I can do it over 20-25 miles so don't see why it's impossible over a longer distance.