Monday 2 June – Sunday 8 June. T-minus 9 weeks until Ride London
As we’ve completed our first three-week training block, this week was recovery time. From what we’ve read, the recovery time is vital in any training plan; it’s when your muscles grow and strengthen after they’re put through the wringer on the harder training weeks.
One fly in the ointment of a perfectly restful week: I won a place on the inaugural Barclays Cycle Hire (“Boris Bike “) race at the London Nocturne, an annual festival of night cycle racing held around the iconic Smithfield Meat Market in the City of London. There was no way I could pass that up, so for me the week’s restful cycling got rather more intense towards the end.
We’ve not had any new sponsors for a while, which is making us quite sad – if you’re able and you’ve not had chance yet, please do consider giving a few quid (or a few dollars!) to Friendship Works. My employer is still matching donations meaning everything counts double, so any amount you can give will make a major difference! Look, there’s even a cute picture of a sheep here, go on, make him happier:
Tuesday – gentle & flat
Tuesday’s ride was a very gentle 6.7mi pootle up the Wandle Trail and back. We averaged a pedestrian 10.4mph, just what the doctor ordered.
The only thing of any note was Audrey picking up the second Team Sheep puncture. It was slow enough that we could ride it home (with one roadside pumping), which was lucky as Audrey didn’t have a spare inner tube with her! Cue tuts and raised eyebrows from me…
Thursday – short hills
We’ve not done any specific hill training before, and knew that needed to change. Later in a recovery week it’s fine to do some short duration high-intensity activity, so the excuses ran out and hill training it was. Wimbledon Hill was the venue which, aside from being local, is also the last climb of any note on the Ride London route (at an eye-watering 91 miles in!). It’s not a particularly long climb, but it has a decent incline.
We did four ascents of the hill for a total of 355ft gain over 1.5 miles in 9m14 for me, 11m30s for Audrey (only counting climbing time/distance). For some context, Leith Hill – the steepest ascent on the Ride London route to the highest overall point – rises 518ft over 1.8 miles. Box Hill – the largest climb – rises 557ft over 2.7 miles.
For our first attempt at some formal hills, this wasn’t too shabby compared to where we need to end up, although obviously on this occasion we had reasonable breaks between each block of climbing as we looped back down the hill. No such luxuries when rolling up Leith Hill!
I’m afraid to say there’ll be many more hill climbing sessions in the coming weeks, including tackling Leith and Box hills at some point – we don’t want them to be a surprise on the day.
Saturday – Mr Sheep Goes Boris Bike Racing!
The week’s major excitement came on Saturday evening when I took part in the inaugural Barclays Cycle Hire race at the London Nocturne. The Nocturne is an institution of the London cycle racing calendar with its wide variety of races held as night falls around the historic Smithfield Meat Market. Penny farthings, folding bikes (the competitors have to sprint to and unfold their bikes to start!), and men’s & women’s elite professional races are just some of the races featured on the programme.
The cycle hire race, new this year, saw 30 competitors taking to the course on Barclays Cycle Hire bikes (universally known as Boris Bikes, after our floppy-haired mayor). These bikes are exceptionally heavy (23kg / 51lb; for comparison my relatively “heavy” road bike weighs about 9.5kg / 21lb) and have very easy gearing making maintaining a high speed an exercise in very high cadence pedalling! You may recognise the bikes from New York, Boston, Chicago, Montreal, and many other cities around the world who use the same system.
I’m a frequent user of the scheme – daily coffee-hunting trips around Shoreditch – so I had some idea of what it might take to win. The field included several celebrities alongside competition winners like myself, so I did my homework and cyber-sleuthed details on those celebrities and reckoned I stood a good chance of beating most of them (with the exception of Jeanette Kwakye, a former Olympic 100m sprint runner! Hmm, former… maybe?). I had no idea about the other non-celebrity competitors, though. As it turned out, there were a few very fast cyclists in the field – as soon as I saw the Kingston Wheelers were in town any serious thoughts of winning went out the window!
The 1.1km (~0.7mi) course loops around the historic Smithfield Meat Market and includes some very tight corners, a fast drop downhill at one end, and some very narrow sections. Just the ticket for a bunch of complete amateurs to go racing super-heavy bikes with, shall we say, fairly pedestrian brakes…
I dressed myself up a bit for the occasion, testing out my Mr Sheep regalia to try and whip up some support from the Nocturne crowd, well known for their enthusiasm. They didn’t disappoint, I got huge cheers and shouts of “GO MR SHEEEEEP” each lap. My favourite: “GO ON STRANGE SHEEP MAN”. Thank you, whoever you were!
No @SuperCyclingMan so the fans are flocking to support a new super hero! Mr Sheep! He’s got shearing pace! #smithfieldnocturne
— Nick Miller (@nick_d_miller) June 7, 2014
The race was four laps, totalling 2.7 miles, which doesn’t sound long compared to the rides we’ve done recently, but when sprinting on a 23kg cycle hire beast it was very tough – not helped by trying to follow the blistering pace set by the three Lycra-clad riders at the front!
The first lap went to plan, I followed my colleague Syed tightly saving a bit of energy for later in the race. At the end of the first lap, the field had started to fragment so I passed Syed, as planned, and the rapper MiKill Pane (who turned out to be the fastest of the celebrities by quite some margin) and did a brief sprint to catch back up with the front pack. The next two laps I followed relatively closely with the few guys in front, however the leading trio were starting to pull away from that group.
The wonderful cheers of the crowd kept me going and, while I slowed slightly on the last lap I finished in 8m20s, less than 40 seconds behind the leading trio and in tenth place – ahead of all the celebrities and having lapped the whole of Rough Copy (no, I had no idea who they were either).
I averaged a very speedy 19.7mph – don’t think there is any way I could have gone faster at my current level of fitness, so I’m counting myself very happy. I was also utterly destroyed – it has been many years since I’ve gone all-out max-effort for any extended period of time and my lungs were telling me that!
If you enjoyed my antics at the Nocturne, please consider making a donation to Friendship Works – you can read all about why we’re supporting this fabulous local charity in our Welcome Post here.
My highlights of the event are below – recommend watching full screen for the best quality:
If nothing else, I can now legitimately describe myself as the Official Tenth Fastest Boris Bike Rider in London!
Here’s the official highlights – if you’ve eagle eyes you may just catch me at the start. The blistering pace of the leading trio is quite something!
If you’re still hankering after more, you can also watch my full uncut footage from the race – including the whole of the cool-down lap.
Sunday – gentle short “long” ride
We finished up the week with our “long” ride which, for this gentle recovery week, was planned at 25-30 miles. We took a nice ride out to Richmond Park, using the outer gravel paths rather than the roads so as to keep the speed low, doing 27 miles total at 11.1mph average. After my exertions on Saturday, I was tired by the end, but it was a beautiful evening and late enough in the day that the park was lovely and quiet yet still fully light. The sort of ride to remind yourself why you love cycling, and a great way to finish our rest week.
Next Week
Quickly looking forward to next week, we’ll be back on the longer-distances and higher-intensity with a vengeance. For one reason or another, the following week will be quite laid back for cycling, so we’re going to try and get a week’s worth of high-intensity cycling in before Friday lunchtime! Tune in next week to find out how that went…
The boring stats:
- Weekly distance: 44.7 miles (Mark), 40.6 miles (Audrey).
- Average moving speed (long weekend ride): 11.1mph
- Moving time (long weekend ride): 2h27m
- Total punctures to date – Mark: 0, Audrey: 2
- Total zero-speed falling-over-due-to-cleat-issues – Mark: 9, Audrey: n/a (still clever enough not to get involved in such stupid devices).
- Total training miles to date (including cycling to work, not including spinning or rollers) – Mark: 736 miles, Audrey: 606 miles.