Healthy, wealthy, and tired.
I try to drive to work as little as possible, partly due to my desire to be green, and partly due to my desire to save £200 a month on petrol. In the last few weeks, I have been increasing my stamina at cycling, ready for the big one: cycling the 31 miles to Chesterfield and back, whilst also managing to stay alert, awake and professional at work.
Last week I finally did it, and documented the whole thing on GPS. In homage to my near anonymous friend “Jon”, and his Skinnywheels blog, here it is in all its glory:
To Chesterfield and Back
It’s a reasonable easy ride. I take a direct route on the way there, which takes in the joys of the A61, a national speed limit dual carriageway that runs about 7 miles of the route. I only do it on the way there, because at 6:30am it’s fairly traffic-free. At 4pm, you don’t want to be on a road with lorries doing 70mph and no cycle lane.
The plus sides of the A61 are plentiful:
- a smooth, smooth, non pot-holed road, all the way.
- a solid 3 mile coasting downhill (I managed 31mph with the wind against me!).
- a more direct, and thus shorter, route.
On the way home, I go through Chesterfield city centre, then Unstone and Dronfield, which is safer, avoids all but 2 of the monster evil roundabouts and is a more modulating route, with small ups and downs rather than a 3 mile long rise.
On recent trips, I have cut my 1 hour 15 outward trip to 1 hour 8. I am hopeful of hitting around 55 minutes, which would mean I am faster than driving it in rush hour!
Visit everytrail.com, where you can read all kinds of interesting details about my top speed, elevation, etc.
April 28th, 2011 at 1:16 pm
Wow. Good effort.