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 fast
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.
Mid-week deer
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 first successful 50 mile ride – all the parks!
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.
The boring stats
- Weekly distance: 131.9 miles (Mark), 83.8 miles (Audrey, not including the spinning of ~11 miles).
- Average moving speed (long weekend ride): 11.7mph
- Moving time (long weekend ride): 4h30m
- Total punctures to date – Mark: 0, Audrey: 1
- Total zero-speed falling-over-due-to-cleat-issues – Mark: 9, Audrey: n/a.
- Total training miles to date (including cycling to work) – Mark: 594 miles, Audrey: 505 miles.