Days 19 and 20: Rest day then Argeles-Gazost to Mirande

90 km. Details

Decided to just chill yesterday. Beautiful surroundings, nice sunshine, decent food. Speaking of food, if you visit Argeles-Gazost, eat at Au Fond du Gosier. Really good restaurant serving the local cuisine at a very reasonable price, the €25 menu is excellent.

Possible that a rest day was a good idea, because today's ride was moderately strenuous. I'm slightly surprised to see that it involved less than 800m of climbing, because it felt like more - big climb out of Lourdes then a succession of rolling hills between Tarbes and Trie-sur-Baise, before a fast flat finish into Mirande. Lovely weather, again - I don't want to jinx myself by going on about the weather, but I've been amazingly lucky so far, just one wet day on the bike in almost three weeks.

I felt good, too. The usual things that happen when I put in really serious time on the bike are starting to materialise. I've lost a bit of weight; not much, nowhere near as much as I need to lose, but enough for the waistbands to feel just a little looser. Resting heart rate was down to 42 this morning from its usual 48 or so when I'm only semi-fit. I'm always surprised by how quickly this happens, I can't believe the stroke volume can change that much that fast, so there's something complicated going on there that I can't guess at. And most important, I'm starting to feel strong, I could easily have cruised on for another couple of hours today had the need arisen.

I don't think I've posted a picture of what the bike looks like when loaded up, so I'll rectify that now.

 

I see that it looks heavier than it feels. There's about 14kg there in total. Much heavier and I'd split the load between front and rear, but it handles very nicely as it is. 

I am in Mirande. I picked it as a stopping-point for no reason other than that it was in the right direction and about the distance I expected to want to ride, but it turns out to be quite a nice little town, with a cathedral that suggests it was a place of some importance six or seven hundred years ago. And much to my satisfaction, the builders knew a thing or two about buttresses.

And just to cheer me up further, I see that Sunderland beat Chelsea today. Yet another great escape may still be on...

Haven't yet decided where to go tomorrow, but I think I'll head east.