PL Training ride

This past Sunday, 7th of May, an intrepid trio braved the cool Maputo Autumn for a "quick" ride out to the district of Namaacha. Not the climb mind you. That we'll tackle this weekend at the Classica da Namaacha race. No this would be a pleasant training ride to keep the muscles supple in preparation for our race. And who was this intrepid trio? Mathieu Destrooper, a Belgian cyclist who has recently embarked on his Mozambican adventure; Patrick Verissimo, our up and coming vet climber; yours truly, Maputo resident for almost 18 years (and counting).. We met at the designated spot in front of FACIM in downtown Maputo at 6:30 (ish..) hoping for some other cyclists who seem to talk more about cycling than actually training. When they didn't appear we set off at a leisurely pace down the glass-strewn 25th of September. Must have been quite a party the night before.. Out to Matola and the pace gathered speed as we descended down to Matola bridge on the wet road from the rain the night before. Fortunately no big puddles on the Boane road and the sun slowly warmed the road up and everything turned dry. Arriving into Boane we stopped off at our usual Galp Petrol station for a quick expresso, no pun intended, and then set off to conquer pedreira hill, which would be the steepest climb of the day.
The pace was high from the start and we suffered along the final uphill section... at least 2 of us did. Mathieu seemed like he was cycling down a hill. Once to the top we descended down the other side and then back up again, training for the KOM sprint spot.
Then on to the Pequenhos Libombos loop, over the dam wall and past the Libombos resort village. It was a glorious day, fresh but with few clouds and the gentle slanting sun that warms but doesn't over-heat. With the cold southerly wind it made a nice combination.
Once through the Libombos peritimetre gate we set a fast paceline hitting over forty km's per hour right up to the railway crossing. Then over the damaged bridge, open only to pedestrian traffic and back up to Boane and a little refreshment at the Galp station. We'd pushed hard and long, but all still felt strong. After that it was another strong paceline through to Belhorizonte and up Matola Hill, which after 100km proved a bit of a killer. There we separated as Patrick and Mathieu went for some extra Mozal loops and I headed home to a nice breakfast. All in all an energetic training ride that was a bit of fun as well. A perfect cycling outing. Looking forward to the race though. Cycling is a drug!