22 July: Boismont to Luneville

All those intervals up Swains lane at 5 am in the morning  in the past 4 months have been really useful: if I do not push too hard my muscles can recover overnight. In spite of yesterday’s hills this morning I was feeling great. The only thing that takes longer to recover are non – muscular pains such as the one behind the knee (now fixed completely after adjusting the handlebar and lowering the saddle 5 mm, just to be on the safe side). Yesterday I also started feeling a bit of saddle sore. I think it is a combination of uneven road, pave’ and a pair of shorts that put pressure in the wrong places. This is strange, because I’ve used these shorts a number of times and they are supposed to be good quality. It’s not a friction problem, it’s really just continuous pressure and blood being constrained. Today I’ve used a different pair and I pedalled out of the saddle for quite a lot of time and things seem to have improved a bit.

Regarding today’s route: the scenery was not as spectacular as the previous days. After crossing 60 km of remote French countryside I started following the Moselle river to Nancy. This is an industrial area, nothing special here. I spent a bit of time rerouting the course because my original file took me on a very narrow and muddy path (see picture below). I’ve created the routes using a mix of Google maps and www.bikeroutetoaster.com. Someone must have made a mistake by marking that thing as “paved cycle path”.

I joined a “proper” cycle path approximately 20 km before Nancy and I remained on it up to the city center. I then took a D route to Luneville with a final 100 m gentle climb over 2.5 km at km 120. After a  bit of up and down the roads descends into Luneville, a very French town with a great castle.

Overall, 133 km with 680 m climbs and a good average in spite of the off – road.  I’ve now passed the half way mark :-)! This is the trace:

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/547050655

And these a few pictures:

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This is where the GPS took me...

This is where the GPS took me…

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