Two laps for 100 miles.

My second scheduled century ride was Thursday, another windy day, so decided to use familiar territory and cycle two 50 mile laps.

The first leg heading south is more downhill, unfortunately I did not get the benefit, as it was in to the wind, but this did have the advantage of having the wind behind me for the second leg uphill.
I had to do a bit of mental blocking as I stopped to change my water bottles over, at home, ..."I'm not home I have 50 miles to go I'm not home..." Etc etc. Two or three minutes later I was no my way.
The second lap was much like the first, only a bit slower.
Over the last week or so the weather has warmed considerable, and it's a beautiful ride through Ashdown forest with the bluebells and daffodils coming up, it's also amusing to see the young rabbits startled and run about, as they don't tend to see me until I am right on top of them.
It stayed dry for most of the ride and there were not too many idiots seeing how close they could get their wing mirrors to my ears or knees.
Total distance for the day 106 miles.

First 100 mile ride

Well I could not have picked a worse day. But it was scheduled.
Monday 27th, I thought I should familiarize myself with the last 50 miles of the ride, so John and Fleur waved me off from the Samson centre at 09:45, heading for Andover in the rain with a slight head wind.
By the time I reached Basingstoke I was very wet and a bit fed up, my average speed was low, under 16mph. I continued on the A30, which was a bit better, then on to the A303, this is where it got very interesting. The wind was coming from the south west, so most of the time I was getting blown in to the road, lorries and cars passing me at high speed leaving me struggling to stay on the bike in the turbulence.
The wind got worse, as did the rain, so when I saw the possibility of turning around at Forton I took it, little did I know that I was only three miles from my goal, I had 70km showing on my Polar CS200, but I figured it was to dangerous to continue. The return was much safer, the wind was still coming across me, but more from behind. The result being I went faster, and the only danger was of ending up in the ditch (better than under an HGV I suppose).
I decided at Odiham to make up some of the missing miles so did a couple of loops of the bypass.
Shortly after that having consumed almost three of my four bottles of High5 4:1, I tried my first ever " Maxim Energy Gel ", wow... I took off like a rocket, I arrived back in Guildford showing 150k about 94 miles on my clock, so headed for Woking. I covered 97 miles, all in all I was quite pleased with the ride, considering the adverse conditions, that is not to say I enjoyed it, bit too scary and wet, for that.