Be More Emily!

A cold one!

I nearly chickened out - I wasn't sure I could get my head (or legs) around the temperature change.  I'm reading Emily Chappell's Where There's A Will. It's an eye opening account of her race in the Transcontinental - a 4000km cycle ride across Europe where sleeping is optional. She doesn't do much of it. She's my new hero.

After I told myself to Be More Emily, I was out of the door by 10am (you don't actually have to be Emily!)

Of course, I was glad once I was out. And, doing Malham anti-clockwise means there are lots of opportunities to turn back if it's just too chilly.  There was a brisk headwind but I'd warmed up before I'd reached Ilkley. Focusing on one chunk of the circuit at a time, it was looking like I might turn off for Littondale after all. 

And sure enough, here it is.  I hid in a nook in the wall here to shelter from the wind and eat a quarter of my tuna sandwich (the new food drive) before I started up Brootes Lane.  Thankfully, it was totally sheltered all the way to the top and by this time, I knew the wind would be more on my side as I started to head for home - feeling comfortable despite the -5 degrees windchill prediction (and it felt all of that in places.)

I paused four times for four quarters of my sandwich in the hope that I wouldn't be out of fuel and needing the cafe in Airton.  It worked out well and I carried on plodding, not wanting my muscles to cool down or my motivation to wane.  Shortly after leaving Airton, a huge flock of fairfields flew out of a berry tree in front of me - feeding up to keep warm no doubt.

Then it was just steady, steady with the wind in my favour.  Emily talks about knowing that however tired her legs are, she knows they'll keep going.  With my new mantra, I enjoyed myself all the way there and all the way home with any excuse not to make 60 miles quashed by Emily's daily 180!  

Hardly a Transcontinental but maybe we could say, a Circumnavigation of Malham Moor?!

I've put away 2700 calories today with a few more planned before bedtime and hopefully, the last chapter of the book.