North Cheshire Clarion Club Run

"Ahhhh, a bloody wasp has just flown up my base layer sleeve and stung me", seriously you wouldn't believe me if I told you, but it happened to me today out on the club ride. About five minutes after heaving myself a nasty little hill on the route (heart rate hit 186bpm - total RED lining), I felt something just fly up my sleeve and then the sensation of the sting going in. Damn! It was bearable at the time, tonight my wrist is slowly seizing up, not painful though.

It didn't take the shine off a really nice ride out, we did 50 miles in all. Heading North from Warrington rather than South, it made a nice change to see a new route and ride some new roads. Today's cafe stop was at Rufford Marina in Rufford, Lancashire. Arriving, it quickly dawned on us that this was road bike central. All in, there must of been fifty road cyclists already seated with more arriving as the minutes ticked by.

Seems a lot of the Lancashire clubs use this as their regular cafe stop, there was a real collection of kit parked up, plenty of Dolans there with being in Lancashire. Liverpool Mercury and Harry Middleton Cycles clubs both turned up en masse, there were sixteen of us, so a real hotbed of clubs, new and old, which was nice to see.

I took the unicorn out today (nickname the lads in the club have given my Dolan Ares), it was a last minute decision as I spent an hour mounting mudguards on my Specialized Secteur Sport, thinking it was going to hammer down. As it turned out, it was overcast, but dry and the bike returned home unscathed, immediately cleaned and put back into it's display cabinet in our dining room :-)

July hasn't been the best month for miles, I've only got a couple of hundred miles under my belt for a number of reasons, so work to do as the Manchester 100 and Tour of Britain Stoke stage are looming, happy days.