Fortunately I didn’t need to leave south east England (or even take time off work) to achieve this.

Instead, I simply totalled my weekly metres climbed and found I had ascended nearly 9,000 metres in March.

This makes a nice new additional target.

I am now aiming to not only ride at least 1,000 kilometres each month but to also keep my total climbing over 8,848 metres.

No, not without clothes (too cold for that) but rather without technology and I was 13% faster over my North Downs route.

I was trying to find my fastest pace by paying close attention to how hard I was breathing and how my legs felt instead of how fast I was going and what my cadence was.

I got the idea from this week’s newsletter (no.288) from RoadBikeRider.com.

When your breathing is steady and regular, say one in-breath for every two pedal rotations, it means you’re below or at your lactate threshold even though the effort feels hard. But if you start to pant, you’ve gone over the edge. Back off slightly to find your lactate threshold again.

Listen to your quads too. When the effort makes them merely uncomfortable, you’re fine. But if they start to burn and throb, back off.

It worked a treat. I felt great throughout the ride and I could concentrate a lot more on the road and improving my technique.

The best part was I had a lot more energy left for the last three hills of the ride between Underriver and West Kingsdown and I arrived back at Longfield station in time to catch the earlier train back to London.

It was a bit of a hazy and breezy yesterday but I headed out into the Kent countryside to find some hills.

Doing circuits of Richmond Park is fine for working on technique but there are only 116 metres of climbing over the 11 kilometres. That’s not a bad climb rate (10.5m/km) but any more than four circuits gets a bit boring.

I’ve entered the White Horse Challenge at the end of April and it has 1,400 metres of climbing over the 150 kilometre course. The climb rate is less than Richmond Park but having to do nearly 14 circuits to get the distance would bore me to death.

The route I had planned for yesterday started at Longfield and the first ten kilometres to Cobham were good for getting warmed up before the climbing started.

The first real hill began with a motivating 25% sign at its base. Fortunately it was quite a short climb but there would be several longer and equally steep hills to come before getting back to Longfield.

The views out over the North Downs were a wonderful distraction and I passed through some beautiful villages.

The 74 kilometre route was an anti-clockwise circuit and there was hardly any traffic. It helped that I never went onto any A roads and the only busy sections were the B260 out of Longfield and getting through Kemsing during lunch time.

Total climbing was 1,175m

Longfield is an easy 40 minutes by train from London Victoria.

Click here to download a pdf of the map and here for the TrackLogs trl file.

With the clocks about to leap forward and the days already getting longer it’s time to start putting in more miles.

I need to build my stamina if I want to enjoy this year’s big rides.

My average ride length so far in 2007 is only a little over 16 kilometres (10 miles) which is hardly building what’s needed for the London to Brighton on June 17, never mind the the British Cyclosportive on July 1st.

Just making my Saturday rides longer won’t be enough either so whenever I can I’ll commute in via a route that’s a little over double my regular distance.

On regular days I’ll ride my hybrid and bring an extra set of work clothes so I can use my new road bike on the days when I want to do the longer ride.

Work’s recently installed showers will make those longer days a lot more pleasant for the rest of the team plus there’s a quiet corridor behind one of the technical areas where I can leave my bike during the day.

If you use My Cycling Log then you’ll be familiar with its colour-coded calendars.

More green days, less blue days and a few yellow Saturdays is all I’m aiming for.