A handy little roadie outing

Another hot day today with temperatures up in the high 20s. But fortunately, over towards the high mountains, clouds were starting to build which took some of the heat off our ride this afternoon. We started from the Quercabanac roundabout and headed along to Seix before a steady climb up to the Ustou Valley (one of my fave places) and then the real climb of the afternoon up to the Col de Latrape. But the legs were feeling good, the heart rate was steady and I didn't crumble into an exhausted heap when I reached the top.... which is good! A fun descent to Aulus and a refill of the water bottles before the ride back down the valley to Oust. It was going to be a gentle tootle back, with Andy leading off and me tucking in behind him and vice versa. But on my lead, we spotted three club riders ahead so I was 'encouraged' to put the hammer down and try to catch and overtake them.... which we did and which they didn't seem too happy about, (probably because they were being overtaken by a GIRL!)....... only for us to pull in a kilometre further down the road at Ercé for a coffee (him) and panaché/shandy (me) which gave the club riders the opportunity to make a sarcastic comment as they passed us, along the lines of 'finished already have you?' to which they received an equally sarcastic reply! So after that brief pit stop, back on the bikes for a pootle the rest of the way back. WRONG! Andy spotted another group of riders ahead (from the Saint-Girons cycle club from what we could tell) and decided it would be fun to try and catch them too. What is it with blokes needing to catch people ahead!! So this time, he took the lead, I tucked in behind and, battling the headwind, he caught them just as we arrived back at the roundabout. It was a good final spurt.

So, a nice little outing in wonderful weather. Sum total of 2 hrs 8 mins in the saddle, 48 kms and 663m of ascent (not the 905m that Garmin Connect is showing in the ride summary!). But I trust their calculation that I had burned over 2000 calories so I felt entirely justified in stuffing my face after the ride with a delicious 'tartelette à l'abricot' from the divine boulangerie/patisserie in Seix. Nom nom!

We are seeing an increasing number of professional teams out training in the area at the moment, with the Orbea team car out and the Colnago and Bouygues teams on the roads. It's that time of year :-)