Not enough hours in the day?

I love the May Bank Holiday weekend. There are a combination of factors.... the prospect of the summer ahead, a long weekend, the start of the fishing season and all the things happening on the Island to make life more interesting.
Obviously, being a dedicated cyclist my first thoughts had to be of planning my training around the family's needs and other commitments. I decided not to do the IOW Randonnee on the Sunday, mainly because I don't feel that I need to do another 80 miler at the moment. I've already got two long rides under my belt in the last 3 weeks , and at the moment I'm aiming to increase the intensity of my rides, rather than the distance. It's a difficult balance to strike, but it's also important that I don't totally knacker myself. Riptide are playing at the Over The Edge biker rally on Sunday night, so I need to be on form, full of vim and energy, rather than feeling ready for bed.
Saturday afternoon I got my first chance to try out the heart rate monitor (HRM). I planned to do a 20 miler at just under 20 mph and aimed to try and keep my rate between 70-80%. I sellotaped a small note on the crossbar with the target rates written against 60, 70 and 80% rates which I had calculated from one of the formulae on a HRM website. It was interesting to see that when I started and settled into the ride, my rate wasn't high enough. I had to consciously pick up the effort to get over the 7o% mark and then I had to push it the whole way. So straight away I can see the the HRM ensures that I'm putting in the right amount of effort and getting the most out of the session.

Up at 5 am Sunday morning. I can promise you it took real dedication to force myself out of the house. I had to sneak into the bedroom to pick up my mobile just before I left, and I was so tempted to change my mind and slip under the nice warm duvee next to my nice warm wife. Another two hours sleep or two hours on the bike? The bike won...now that is true grit.

I needed to back within a couple of hours so I aimed to do about 40 miles or so. It was cold, misty and windy. Again I wore the HRM and went a little slower keeping to about 65-70%. Unfortunately I had terrible reflux towards the end of the ride and felt quite sick by the time I got home.
I'm deliberately not mentioning my mardy bum, in case you're all becoming besotted with its well being.

10 am and my mate helped me to relaunch my boat in Yarmouth Harbour. The town was brimming with recreational cyclists doing the Randonnee. This is an 80 mile ride around the Island. Congratulations to everyone who did it, or even attempted to do so. I saw a huge variation of machines and ironically the people who had the worst bikes also seemed to be the least fit.
One observation. Many man-woman couples were clearly riding 'together'. But, time after time, as I overtook them in my car, the man would be about a third of a mile ahead of the woman, while she puffed along in his wake, red-faced and exhausted. Why do blokes always do that? Couldn't he ride at her pace, or even lead her by a metre or so to enable her to take it slightly easier in his slipstream? It must be so demoralising to be constantly playing catch-up, and surely doesn't do much for the sense of togetherness.

Finally, lets hope and pray that Madeleine, the missing English girl in Portugal, can be recovered, alive and well. It's a horrible situation, a nightmare.

Well done to the Wolves. Bring on the Baggies.