Longer rides

Yesterday I rode around 85km. It was very pretty, and I had a great coffee at Pomona.

The problem I am having at the moment, is that although I can ride this far with no real problems, I am still rather slow. It took 4 and a half hours, including coffee, and I was very tired for the rest of the day, and not very productive.
I am hoping that after riding this sort of distance in France, I will have both time to be a tourist, and the energy to be interested in being a tourist!
Fortunately, in the earlier part of the ride, it was fun to be a tourist whilst on the bike. Look at the artwork you can see right here in rural Queensland.


I did not ride today, for social reasons, but plan some windtraining sessions during the week and a series of longer rides over Easter.

Still Training

It has been hard going keeping up with the training for the past month, as it has been raining, and flooding for all of this time. Despite this, I have been riding or running 4 times a week, thanks to the windtrainer. The problem is that windtraining is just not exciting, and although I am pleased to have kept up with my one hour sessions, it is not the same as a 2-3 hour ride.
I particularly noticed this on Saturday when I rode the bike on the road for the first time in 3 and 1/2 weeks. I rode reasonably well, had no trouble with the hills, but I was completely worn out for the whole day after a 2 hour ride. I did not do anything on Sunday at all. This is not good for the training programme.
However, this week we booked our tickets to Europe. I feel very poor all of a sudden. Traveling at high season is not the way to find cheap airfares, but as the whole idea is to look at the Tour de France, traveling in the shoulder season is not an option.
I had a little trouble with the tickets. I booked and paid on line, and although the full amount was charged to the credit card, only one e-ticket was dispatched.
I sorted this out this morning with the airline, no trouble, but whilst I was on the phone the very helpful fellow wanted me to book specific seats. He promised me good seats, and I asked for a window seat. All fine, very polite la-de-da.
However, fortunately my husband came across a very useful site a few weeks ago, and when I could get to my computer, I looked up the seats the helpful airline fellow had given me at seatguru.
I was very displeased to discover that he had kindly given us the only "window" seat in economy that does not actually have a window for one plane type (2 legs of the journey) and the only economy seat without a locker that opens for another 2 legs of the journey.
I telephoned the airline again and made a polite fuss, and had the seats changed to ones that seat guru describes as standard economy, with no little drawbacks like being next to the loo. I hope seat guru is right, it is a long way to Europe, and surely would seem a lot longer in a horrid seat.