Mr and Mrs P do hills

Up earlyish to prepare for riding today with Agent Alex and Busy B and Coach. However it was not to be. Firstly Beth cancelled with Moonwalk Malady...in preparation for staying up all night walking 26miles on Saturday she is in sleep deprivation training and had a bad night. Then Alex called off with Goodwood Knees. As I was already in my gear I couldn't think of a reasonable excuse not to go so off we went at about 8am. John decided on a last minute route change and we were quite pleased to be taking a route we hadn't cycled before. Ha! Be careful what you wish for is all I can say in retrospect!
 We took a back road off the A272 on the other side of Cowfold. It was a long, slow incline that went on for miles. Followed by yet more inclines, followed by one mighty steep one that had me off the bike and pushing it up the hill! Only the second time in training I have had to resort to that. All this and we'd only covered 14km in just under an hour! We went through Handcross down to the junction near the Cowdray Arms pub. Turned right to Cuckfield and John said he thought it was fairly flat for the trip to Cuckfield. At one point he kindly said 'Darling' (he calls us all that, thinks its motivational!) 'don't feel you have to catch me up on the hills, take your time'. If  I'd had any breath left at that stage I would have explained that my main focus was on keeping my lungs and heart going and the only reason I MAY have for wanting to catch him up is to deliver a slap to the side of  his head for taking me on such a ridiculous route. I was feeling a bit tired and emotional by the time we'd completed the long climb into Cuckfield. I caught up with John sitting on a wall outside the pub talking to the nice landlord, Bill. (I guess he'd been waiting some while if he was on first name terms with the guy). Whilst I recovered (and managed to stay vertical) John explained to Bill that he'd told me the road to Cuckfield was flat. Bill laughed (knowingly) and mentioned that it wasn't likely as Cuckfield is the second highest village in Sussex. That's the Sussex that is home to the South Downs. So you can imagine what a climb it was.
I'd like to say it was all downhill after that but of course, this is Sussex, so it wasn't. But we did eventually get home. Having covered about 28miles (27.5 of them uphill I swear) in 2.5hrs. Slow average speed but hey, I didn't need an ambulance so I'm not complaining. Though it seems that way when I read this back!
And as John is off on his own training camp in the south of France next week, I jolly well hope he gets all the hill training he desires! Bless him.