Much better than all the blathering on in our last blog post, here’s a quick highlights video of our 50-mile 11-park ride from last weekend. For best quality, view full screen or directly on YouTube.
Apologies for the excessive shakiness, it was my first time using our new helmet camera so some practice / tightening required!
Week 1 of our training period ended this Sunday, and Tuesday saw spinning (Audrey) and speedy commuting (Mark), Thursday an extended ride home via Richmond Park, and Sunday our first successful 50 mile ride. As of this week, we’ve now completed over 500 miles of training each!
We’re also starting to ramp up the fund raising for the fabulous Friendship Works – a massive thank you to everyone who has supported us already, we’ve raised over £300 so far, with over £120 added in the last 48 hours alone. You can read all about why we’re supporting Friendship Works in our welcome post, but if you haven’t had a chance to sponsor us yet please do, they are a tiny but highly effective charity making a real difference to society and the children they help and are deserving of all the support you can give – and your sponsorship is a real encouragement to us as we train. All donations are currently being matched by my employer, so now is a great time to donate – with the matching and gift aid every £1 donated is worth £2.25 to Friendship Works! You can donate in dollars or pounds on our Just Giving page:
Or, in the UK, you can quickly donate £10 by texting BAAA88 £10 to 70070 – if you use the text service, do remember to follow the instructions in the reply to allow Gift Aid to be claimed on your donation!
Tuesday’s rides were fairly standard for me, to and from work trying to keep up the pace between the traffic lights – let’s call it enforced interval training! Audrey had meetings that made cycling to work impossible, so she substituted in a high intensity spinning class. I also did leisurely-paced rides to and from work on Wednesday.
Our mid-length, mid-pace ride this week was out to Richmond Park on our way home from work on Thursday (scoping out a part of the route for Sunday’s 50 miles – using LCN37 then NCN4 to reach the park). This ride totaled 24 miles for me, 22 miles for Audrey, which we found quite tough on top of the 9-10 miles we’d already done to work; we were both pretty much wiped out by the end. The park lap averaged 12.7mph, not super fast but given how tired we were, not unhappy with it.
Our weekend ride took in eleven of London’s wonderful parks and commons. We started with the Wandle Trail as usual, which goes through King George Park (park no. 1). We then went east to Battersea Park (2) and, from there, zig-zagged back and forth over the river using Chelsea (northbound), Lambeth (southbound) and Southwark (northbound) bridges to head east while avoiding the hectic Parliament Square and Embankment. By blind luck this crazy hopping back and forth neatly avoided a host of road closures for the London 10k, which we’d been totally unaware of when planning our route.
Heading east to Tower Hill (via getting lost around the City for the second week running) we joined and followed CS3 around 7 miles to Beckton, the eastern-most point of our ride. 19.5 miles down at an average of 11.6mph and we were still feeling fresh, so far so good!
We got ourselves onto the Greenway (3) and followed it west to Stratford, at which point we promptly got lost trying to follow the Greenway diversion, adding an extra mile. Nevertheless, we soon found ourselves in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (4), then headed west to Victoria Park (5) and London Fields (6). 27.5 miles in, averaging 11.3mph, it was time for our lunch break at Broadway Market.
We rather over-indulged, sitting in the lovely sunshine eating delicious flatbreads and cakes, but we were “soon” on our way again (well, about an hour later, all said and done – it was quite a wait for food).
West via the City, Embankment, and CS8, we got back to Battersea Park (7, if you count it twice) then followed LCN37 and NCN4 through Barnes Common (8) to reach Richmond Park (9). We did a single short loop in Richmond Park and, still feeling quite fresh, did the final leg home, ticking off Putney Heath (10) and Wimbledon Park (11) on the way. Overall, 52.8 miles at an overall average of 11.7mph – with the last 10 miles averaging 12.1mph.
This was a great ride for us for a few reasons. Firstly, we kept up the average speed well throughout the ride, with the last ten miles being the fastest of the day. Our speed on other long rides has tailed off markedly towards the end, so finishing strongly and still feeling good was a great boost. Whether due to the faster mid-week rides or the longer outings starting to add up, something is starting to feel better.
After our last attempt at a 50 mile ride ended in injury, we were also very glad to reach the distance without any major knee issues or other niggles.
Another positive was getting our food intake better organised – having a planned lunch stop saved time otherwise wasted looking for somewhere to eat and meant we ate at a sensible point in the ride (near the middle rather than the end), both of which have been problems previously. It will also have been a factor in us still having energy at the end, even with riding against a super-strong head wind for ten miles in the middle. We need to work on minimising the time taken for the break and perhaps eat a little less, but the structure seems right and the benefits of eating properly during the long rides are clear.
One final good thing: I used my clipped-in cleats for extensive parts of the day and didn’t come close to falling over at any point. Yay! Progress!
And with that, on to next week’s 60 mile long ride, the last week of this first “building” phase before we have a cut-back week to solidify our gains.
Sun: check! SheepTracker enabled: check! Many jelly babies: check! Hearty breakfast: check! Chains freshly lubed, bikes pumped up and ready: check!
We’re off on our first 50 mile training ride right now – we’ll be heading broadly anti-clockwise around the route shown, so follow us on the SheepTracker here! And spur us on along the way by giving a few quid to Friendship Works here!
Our training has now started in earnest. The week just ended was week zero of our twelve week plan, with a target of adding in some mid-week riding and our first formal long ride at the weekend with a target of 40 miles.
We only managed the one mid-week day of riding this week; a serious lack of sleep and me not being fully back on my game after the half marathon put paid to a second one – just too tired. On Tuesday we did a gentle paced ride to work (9 miles Audrey, 10.5 miles me) then incorporated three reasonably fast continuous laps of Battersea Park into our journey home, getting our heart rates well up and getting used to moving a bit faster on the bikes. The boring stats: 13.0, 14.3, 13.4mph respectively, for a total of 5.1 miles at an average of 13.6mph.
We found a much better route from Battersea Park to the Wandle Trail by following LCN37. It’s mostly quiet back streets and only a touch longer than following CS8 which, along here, is mostly blue patches under a busy lane of cars and buses on Battersea Park Road and York Road. CS8 is fine at quiet times (read: bank holiday Sundays), but at the time we’re coming home from work it’s a traffic-filled hell, so we’re very happy to have found an alternative. Heavy traffic is the last thing we want after wearing ourselves out in Battersea Park.
This weekend was the London Cycling Campaign’s Big Ride, a 2.5 mile cycle on closed roads from Park Lane to Embankment via the London landmarks of Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Whitehall and Parliament Square to raise awareness of the Space for Cycling campaign ahead of the London council elections in the coming week. Dangle a few miles of central London closed roads in front of us and we’re like moths to a flame! So we built that into the day’s route, heading up to the start of the ride via Battersea, Chelsea Bridge and Hyde Park, with a vague plan to head east afterwards along CS3 and see where we ended up.
The Big Ride itself was a wonderful, good-natured ride with people of all ages on bikes of all shapes and sizes. Pedestrians all along the route were smiling and waving, and the rally at the end had speakers from across the political spectrum all making the right noises, which was highly encouraging.
Our long ride started in earnest after the Big Ride, eventually finding the start of CS3 after bumbling around Tower Hill. This is one of the better superhighways, largely having its own dedicated space along a fairly quiet corridor. We followed it to Limehouse Basin (where the Regent’s Canal meets the Thames), then went along the Limehouse Cut towpath to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park.
Once there, we had a good explore; the wide paths about the park are all cycleable but the on-road provision is utterly woeful. It’s very depressing that such poor cycling facilities have been built on an essentially blank canvas. The most tragic-hilarious of all is the bridge to the Lee Valley VeloPark, which has very narrow advisory on-carriageway cycle lanes. It’s not like anyone might cycle to a velodrome, mountain bike course, BMX track or road cycling circuit, eh? It would have been better if they’d not bothered putting anything.
While pootling around, I managed to cycle into an utterly pointless bollard which had been inexplicably placed in the middle of a cycle track, luckily with no harm done other than to my pride. On reaching the VeloPark, we cycled about having a look at things then went on to the beautiful road cycling circuit, a billiard-table-smooth one mile long, six metre wide track with a great selection of elevation changes, banked corners and lovely long straights. Three speedy fun laps of that (14.4, 16.6 and 14.6mph respectively) and we decided we’d best start working our way home, before we overshot our target distance by a huge margin. After we left, we worked out that apparently you’re supposed to pay to use the road track, though honestly we have no idea how, we just followed a big sign that said road track this way and then we were out on it. Still, at £6 for an hour it’s not crazily expensive for a mile-long track for doing speed work, so we may well make our way back here in the coming weeks, and if we do we’ll put some effort into working out just how you’re supposed to pay.
We headed home via the Greenway, Victoria Park, the Regent’s Canal, then a selection of LCN routes across London ending up back on LCN37 and the Wandle Trail, for a total day’s distance of around 46.7 miles (including the 3.6 of the Big Ride which were, to be honest, as much walking on a bike as riding, and two miles back from the post-ride pub visit, so we’ll not include those in the total).
We were tired, but not destroyed, and both felt like we could have done more – which is good because next week we’ll be doing 50 miles, and at a more consistent pace too.
This week sees the start of our formal training plan for the Ride London. It’s not complete yet, but you can see our long-ride distances on our plan page here.
While I’ve been busying myself with my running activities we’ve continued with our training rides, albeit with reduced distance and intensity for me. Before we finally dive into our formal Ride London training plan, here’s a quick round-up of our rides from the last fortnight.
Due to the tube strike, we each cycled to work twice during this week (totalling 43 miles for me, 36 miles for Audrey). On top of this, we rode up to Battersea Park on the Saturday and Audrey did many laps at a fabulously consistent pace, while I sat enjoying the sun tapering for my running and playing with the SheepTracker, our real time tracking solution being developed so all you lovely folk can follow us on the big day. We’ll have more on the SheepTracker in a separate post soon.
This ride was 16 leisurely miles for me, 30 decently paced miles for Audrey. And so, this weeks boring stats:
Luckily, the second batch of tube strikes was suspended, sparing me the enforced cycling to work. After running on Monday this came as a great relief. I did cycle two days (totalling 42 miles), and Audrey cycled 18 miles around Merton on a day’s pottering. We then went to re-acquaint ourselves with Richmond Park on Sunday (where there are currently baby deer galore!), putting in some decent paced laps in the face of a strident headwind.
The headwind slowed us massively for half the lap, with the speed limit stopping us taking advantage on the other half, but it gave us a great workout. The hills are starting to get a little easier, keeping the pace up a little less hard work. Overall, a good ride to lead us into the first week of our structured training plan. We finished our laps with cakes and paninis in the café, then headed home.
This bank holiday weekend (with fine weather, who knew that was possible?) saw my warm-up event for the Team Sheep summer of sporty goodness in aid of Friendship Works – the MKM Half Marathon. You can read about my preparations in this previous post. Running the race with me were my “we run for cake” running partner Chris, my brother Adam, and two of Adam’s colleagues. And several thousand other people, obviously; it wasn’t just the five of us randomly running around Milton Keynes. That would be odd.
After a carefully planned muesli & toast breakfast (avoiding the hotel sausages, that took effort!), we then had a nightmare short drive to Milton Keynes Stadium for the “VIP” pre-booked parking, the last quarter mile of which took 45 highly frustrating minutes. We’d left plenty of time so I wasn’t worried about being late, but I was concerned about running out of petrol. The fuel light had come on as we left the hotel, as the drive was so short I hadn’t worried about it but I hadn’t factored in long periods of idling!
We eventually parked, fuel gauge below zero but still ticking over. The problems had been caused by people who had queued without having booked – perhaps half of the queued cars – each of whom then argued with the one marshal checking reservations. One or two signs back in the queue saying “pre-booked parking only” would have helped massively.
Anyway, Milton Keynes this may be but enough about parking. We reached the stadium and met up with Chris and Adam’s colleagues. The race start was well organised and we dropped our bags and made our way to the starting line. I consumed my pre-race Technical Sports Nutrition Pack (eight jelly babies) and Audrey went to find her first spectator vantage point.
Unusually for a race with several thousand entrants, there was one mass start with no pace-related ordering, so it was up to you to position yourself further forward or backward depending on your intended pace. I was worried this would cause problems at the start, but it worked surprisingly well – the roads in Milton Keynes are very wide so once through the starting gates there was space to safely ease past people (or let people pass) without affecting your own pace.
I ran the first three miles as intended, around 5m05-5m10 per kilometre, keeping my speed mostly under control. The first drink station was around the 3 mile point, and I was much thirstier than normal – it was hotter than all of our training runs – so I dumped the Lucozade Sport I’d been sipping since the start and switched to water. This helped, and I still had eight jelly babies stashed in my pockets in case I needed fuel, so all was good.
I tried to start to lift my pace towards my target 4m58 per kilometre, but didn’t have it in me. The course felt significantly hillier than the 174ft of elevation gain the race materials suggested (after the race I checked and, indeed, I make it 585ft – not massive but a lot more than expected), and it repeatedly went down and up the same incline in central Milton Keynes (see miles three to seven above).
While I had my pace about right for the first 3 miles, the fact that the first 2 miles had been a constant slight climb had taken more out of me than I realised, and by mile 8 I was 1.5 minutes behind where I needed to be for a 1h45 total. Realising I was very unlikely to meet my target, my spirits dropped somewhat and I slowed further, until around three miles from the finish, when I managed to lift the pace some, still feeling generally dreadful.
The last mile and a half looped around a lake on trails then entered the stadium to cross the line. The trail was a bit twisty, making it hard to keep up the pace, but the final stretch running through the tunnel into the stadium and out for a lap around the pitch was a great finish, and I sprinted to cross the line in 1h50m05s.
I’m happy with the time – while I didn’t quite reach the 1h45 that I was targeting, if someone had said to me a year ago that I’d be running a half marathon in less than two hours I’d have laughed. I can see some of the things I need to work on (hills, more speed work, and I suspect I over-tapered) and I’ll be back to do another half before long. Adam finished in 2h19 and Chris in 2h28 – see the slideshow below for more photos of the finish. We won’t talk about the ludicrously fast times set by Adam’s colleagues.
The race done, getting out of the infernal car park took an entire hour, and with our petrol level critical we resorted to poor old Audrey (who’d walked seven miles in the commission of taking the photographs you see above and cheering us on splendidly) pushing the car when the traffic did move slightly, instead of us sitting with the engine idling. Nevertheless, we eventually made it out and to a petrol station, then took a scenic drive through central London on the way back.
And now, on to the cycling! Audrey and I have around 13 weeks until Ride London, most of the training plans we’ve read are around 12 weeks long, so the timing has worked well (more through luck than judgement). We just need to decide on the training plan we’re following and we’ll be golden…