JLR Strava Club - Longest Ride w/e 21 December 2014

I wanted to get the Strava Grand Fondo 12 badge as this would mean that I achieved 9 of the 12 in 2014 - starting with the April one and getting them every month. It meant a long ride on Friday 19 Dec that I was not sure that I'd make.I had been feeling pretty tired again - it's been a long year both at home and at work and my mileage had been dropping off, as expected as the year end approached. The Friday was the first day of my holiday, the weather was dry and not too cold although the wind was strengthening. I decided to ride one of the routes to the North of Meriden which is about 75 miles and then add some distance on the way back. The problem with the Meriden routes is that there's only one way to get to the routes and that's to Meriden, and hence it means its often the same route back as well - so there's nearly 20 miles of "there and back" whatever else you do on the way out of Meriden.

Anyway I set off and felt reasonably good. I had a few energy bars and gels on the way. It was windier than I had expected and seemed to build as distance went on. The sun was out though and it was "warm enough". The turn back at about 40 miles was welcome although I was feeling quite tired by that point. My Giant is not a bad bike but it currently has the original Giant wheels with 25mm Gatorskins on for winter use and these are about 1.5kg heavier than the normal wheel/tyre set (Cole Rollens). The return leg was about keeping the pace sensible and making sure I got the distance in rather than any chasing of segments. The last 10 miles was hard as I was really tired, and I needed to do a couple of local roads to make sure I got the distance - 82.2 miles and the Grand Fondo was mine.

Here's the route http://www.strava.com/activities/230801673:

As an added bonus I also rode the furthest of the JLR Strava club:

And thanks to the great Veloviewer site I can see all my completed challenges for 2014 in all their glory:

In fact Veloviewer is so good that I paid the pittance of about £9.50 for a year - its about £60 for Strava Pro and I don't think that Strava matches the features - I certainly don't need to set a target in Strava to work towards it.