Lakeside Wheelers ‘A’ Group cyclists stopped for a short tea-break last Sunday in Moate.

Proper winter cycling begins with ‘A’ Group spin

A peek outside at around 8am confirmed what the weather forecast promised - a dull, misty, damp start to the day and unfortunately temperatures to match. We had no option then but to layer up, with headgear and heavy duty gloves required. I headed down to meet the lads and ladies at O’Brien’s Centra for our weekly club spin.

Despite it being the cold and damp morning it was, we had enough riders out to form up two ‘A’ groups. As always, the banter and joking around was a welcome distraction from the biting cold.

But as we cycled along, we had to regularly dart our eyes down to our bike computers which have the routes downloaded and let us know turn to take and which road to go. It’s one of the real advantages of recent technology improvements in the sport of cycling.

Usually the tea and coffee stop is a time we look forward to where we can buy ourselves a treat and take 20 minutes off the bike.

Because of the weather conditions we decided that we would have a quick ‘pitstop‘ sort of coffee break. In reality, that meant stopping at the most convenient shop in Moate and not actually bothering with tea/coffee but just making do with whatever food and water we took along with us! There was no point in standing around getting even colder than we already were.

If I’m being honest, we didn’t adhere to the planned route entirely, and as we approached a junction we decided to turn left, thereby chipping about 8km off our planned distance. Nobody was complaining… funny that, but try and knock a few kilometres off a summertime spin and it will be a different debate entirely!

With no punctures (which was a real bonus), we covered just over 90kms, cycling at exactly the prescribed pace for this time of year. Well done everyone and see you next time on the road.