While the bike us up on blocks awaiting resupply from Wiggle I took up the challenge to "ride" Mt Kilimanjaro from my wife. This is a woman who has ridden a bike twice in the last twenty years but rides up Kilimanjaro on a stationary bike three times a week at the local leisure centre gym.
I despise stationary exercise machines and usually lose the will to live after ten minutes on one. But, I reasoned, I will have to do a fair amount of stationary cycling through the winter when there is snow or ice on the ground so I might as well get used to it.
After she programmed my bike for a one hour ride up Kilimanjaro we set off together. Me whirring away at 110 RPM on the flat approach while she kept up an annoyingly steady 60 RPM for the entire one hour.
After twenty minutes I had a puddle of sweat on the floor, was feeling quite sick and quite honestly if I was not in a fierce competition with my good wife would have given it up. As I went up the smooth tarmac road of the virtual mountain my rate dropped steadily lower until I was down to 55 RPM and pushing to keep it there.
I went over the summit and managed to hang on to the finish. The pain and boredom of riding stationary bikes is going to be hard to overcome.
As a marker in the sand I managed 25.10K in 60 minutes. Not great but I can only improve on that.
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