Monthly Archives: March 2014

Training Rides

Tour de London Parcs

This week’s TeamSheep training ride was a long*, gentle paced tour of London, going through many of the city’s lesser-known parks along the way and ending up as far away as Walthamstow before looping back.

*current definition of long: 44.5 miles

Our cycling tendrils spread across London

The plan was to head up to Russell Square via Battersea Park and the Embankment, then head out along various bits of the London Cycle Network towards the Leyton Marshes and finally Walthamstow, then get home by whatever route took our fancy, with a target of around 45 miles distance, and no particular pace in mind.

The blast up the Wandle Trail into Wandsworth was great, we then passed the old Ram Brewery (still very forlorn and closed, sadly) and on to Cycle Superhighway 8 – one of the better strips of blue paint, but the bottom half of it still isn’t much use. A nice lap of Battersea Park and a quick pit-stop then we headed back to CS8, following the better northern half of it along Millbank to Parliament Square. Here, The Fear got the better of us and we walked across to the other side of the square, before continuing along the Embankment and up through an interminable network of road closures and one-way streets to reach Russell Square – easily the most frustrating part of the day.

From the square out, it was a lovely ride out through Camden Islington, and Hackney on some fairly decent roads for cycling – a combination of separated lanes, filtered streets with little through traffic, and quiet links across parks. The main-road crossings in Hackney after London Fields were less nice – filtered back streets are all well and good but when you just get dumped into a main road without any indication which way you need to go, that isn’t so helpful.

Islington saw my only zero-speed cleat-related falling-over issue of the day, due to completely inexplicably attempting to balance on my pedals while waiting for a car to finish reversing about 20ft away from me, then falling to the side I was still clipped in on. I’ll get the hang of this one day…

After we cleared Hackney, we were soon zooming along over the Leyton Marshes and on to National Cycle Network (NCN) 1 – a route that appears to be everywhere we go – past some reservoirs then into Walthamstow. The least said about that the better and after a quick Frusli bar and some much-needed Haribo, we headed back the way we had come. We spotted the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park on the horizon, so decided to head down that way, following the Lea Navigation towpath which was surprisingly good for cycling along – we were able to keep up a fairly decent pace.

By this point, we were around 26 miles (and 3.5 hours) in to our ride, and hadn’t yet eaten anything significant. This is becoming a bit of a habit of ours, and really doesn’t help our energy levels so we know we’re going to have to work on this as we go forward. 

We decided to try and get to Broadway Market as our best chance of finding a good bite to eat, so after reaching the Olympic Park we headed for a quick zoom around Victoria Park then along the Regent’s Canal which had us there pretty promptly, and we tucked in to some strange but delicious Polish (we think) pancake things filled with cheese and spinach. A bargain at £2.50 each, which was lucky as we’d only brought £5 cash with us!

From here, running low on water (another thing we’ll need to work on – carrying enough to drink!) we began heading towards home in earnest. Not wanting to go back along the Embankment, we went through the City and across into Southwark, making our way along the newly-reopened Upper Ground before crossing back over Westminster Bridge to pick up CS8 once more. From there, we simply reversed our route from the morning and headed back home. By the last couple of miles, I was tiring badly – I think not taking on any significant food until so far into the ride is something we need to address urgently!

So, our longest ride so far by quite some margin, and not a terrible overall pace of 10.6mph. We’ll need to get faster on these longer rides in time, but for now, getting used to being on the bike for 4-5 hours at a time is the only real target we have.

Overall ride summary:

  • Distance: 44.6 miles
  • Elevation gain: 1,628ft
  • Average moving speed: 10.6mph
  • Time: 4h12m moving, 5h52m total
  • Total training miles to date – Mark: 142.4 miles, Audrey: 135.4 miles
Training Rides

Richmond Park Training – Part 2

As it happens, we were back at Richmond Park for a second week running, to try and do some more pace work. In these early rides, we’re just trying to work on time in the saddle, and get a basic understanding of our pace, so we felt a second attempt at Richmond to see if we could speed things up was warranted at this time. More structured speed work and training rides will be starting soon (after I’m done with my half-marathon antics at the start of May).

This ride was similar to our ride a week earlier so no extensive details needed this time around. The only substantial differences were the weather (horrendous hail and rain instead of lovely sunshine), we went clockwise instead of anti-clockwise, and no pub-stop on the way back.

We were a bit slower this time out, Audrey’s knee wasn’t enjoying the cold so our third lap slowed quite considerably and we just nursed ourselves back home – no point giving ourselves injuries this early on by pushing through problems like that.

Here’s the summary:

  • Paced section (part 1, part 2):
    • Distance: 17.3 miles
    • Elevation gain: 899ft
    • Average moving speed: 12.7mph
  • Unpaced section (there and back):
    • Distance: 12.5 miles
    • Elevation gain: 469ft
    • Average moving speed: 10.7mph
  • Total distance: 29.8 miles
  • Total elevation gain: 1,368ft
  • Total training miles to date – Mark: 97.8 miles, Audrey: 90.8 miles

 

Training Rides

Richmond Park Training

For our second training ride we headed to Richmond Park to get some idea of where we are on pace without the interruptions of traffic lights or getting lost, which we normally do a lot while out riding. And I got to try out my new Team Sheep cycling socks, a quality find by Audrey!

Socks with a Team of Sheep on them!
Socks – and cycling socks at that – with a Team of Sheep on them!

For those of you not in the London area, Richmond Park is a beautiful expanse of parkland in southwest London adjacent to Wimbledon Common, containing lots of deer. It also contains lots of cyclists of all different shapes and sizes due to the very nicely paved roads, relatively light traffic, and extensive off-road cycle paths for the more relaxed family oriented cycling. The 6.7 mile loop is particularly popular with road cyclists, as it contains some decent elevation changes and also is 6.7 miles without any traffic lights, an extreme rarity in London! Apparently a good test of cycling fitness is three full laps in an hour; I very much doubt we will be troubling that kind of pace ourselves at any point in this process. That notwithstanding, I’m sure we will make frequent use of this park throughout our training, as it is relatively local for us.

After a leisurely ride there using the newly-paved Wandle Trail to Earlsfield then cutting across via Wimbledon Park (a great route there if you’re in the Colliers Wood / South Wimbledon area, see the route map below), we reached Richmond Park.

Route to Richmond Park

As it happens every person in London who owns a bike clearly had the same idea and, due to the unseasonably warm weather, those without bikes had also driven there so the roads were busier than we’d hoped – particularly around the car parks.

Nevertheless, we did three anti-clockwise short laps (including Sawyer’s Hill but skipping Broomfield Hill and Dark Hill, giving a ~5.5 mile loop with a decent but not onerous amount of climbing) for a total of 17.3 paced miles. The traffic around the car parks slowed us up some, but other than that we were able to maintain a natural pace so a fairly good test; our average speed coming in at 13.1mph over the three laps.

Our 5.5-mile laps of Richmond Park
Elevation profile – climbing up Sawyer’s Hill three times!

After this, I did a full 6.7 mile lap on my own to test out how fast I’m able to go at this point and see what my new bike feels like at a faster pace – in this case I averaged 16.4mph. Very whizzy, but no way I could have maintained that for more than one lap!

Overall an encouraging ride making a decent pace on the laps we rode together – at that pace we should knock Boris’ time into a cocked hat. Just a touch (six times) more endurance needed.

All that remained was a gentle ride back, pausing at the Leather Bottle in Earlsfield to sample their enormous beer garden and enjoy a couple of well earned pints in the last of the day’s sun.

Overall ride summary:

  • Paced section:
    • Distance: 17.3 miles
    • Elevation gain: 884ft
    • Average moving speed: 13.1mph
  • Unpaced section (there and back):
    • Distance: 13.2 miles
    • Elevation gain: 487ft
    • Average moving speed: 10.5mph
  • Mark’s extra lap:
    • Distance: 7 miles
    • Elevation gain: 380ft
    • Average moving speed: 16.4mph
  • Total distance: 30.5 miles (Audrey), 37.5 miles (Mark)
  • Total elevation gain: 1,371ft (Audrey), 1,751ft (Mark)
  • Total training miles to date – Mark: 68 miles, Audrey: 61 miles
Training Rides

First ride – 30.5 miles along & 2,356ft up

We started our Ride London training adventure with what should have been a gentle 32 mile ride in the Kent countryside, following the Houses & Hills route from Jack Thurston’s highly-recommendable book Lost Lanes. We carefully adjusted the route to put the majority of the substantial hills near the start of the ride while we were fresh, by starting from Ightham Mote (an interesting National Trust property that will be worth visiting at some point).

Route

I didn’t even get out of the car park before having my first zero-speed falling-over due to cleats issue. I feel this will be a common occurrence throughout all our training rides.

The initial climb out of Ightham Mote towards the village of Stone Street was a bit tough to start on, but after that the route was nice rolling hills until we passed through Sevenoaks.

From there, we begun our ascent to the top of York Hill. Apparently the steep southern face of York Hill is home to an historic annual cycle climb race – I’m glad we ascended from the north with its long steady gradient which wasn’t too onerous. The descent was a rather thrilling affair, getting down into the drops on my new road bike and (by my very slow standards) stretching its legs for the first time. You can see the steepness of the descent on the elevation profile below around mile 10.

Audrey descending York Hill

Audrey descending York Hill

After this, the route continued through beautiful rolling countryside for another 15 miles or so, keeping ourselves reasonably well fuelled with jam sandwiches and jelly babies along the way. The only notable event during this was my second zero-speed falling-over due to cleats issue of the day due to my chain coming off while ascending a short hill.

Then, near the end, the sting in the tail:

Elevation Profile

What’s that? A climb? A really steep climb? Right at the end of the route? Yup. It turns out that while Ightham Mote itself is at the bottom of a hill, the access to the car park is about 60% of the way up it. That final climb really took it out of us, and we were very glad to be finished.

Overall ride summary:

  • Distance: 30.5 miles
  • Elevation gain: 2,356ft
  • Average moving speed: 10.6mph
  • Time: 2h53m moving, 3h38m total
  • Total training miles to date – Mark: 30.5 miles, Audrey: 30.5 miles