Just a quick one this week as there’s not too much of interest to report.

Battersea Park

Our main training ride this week was another nice cycle to and around Battersea Park, of 24 miles this time. I spent much of the ride getting my saddle position right and think I’m there now, give or take. Audrey carried on lapping the park while I adjusted so whilst we did the same distance, her ride was a more sensible constant pace while mine was a series of pauses to adjust followed by sprints to catch up. Which was rather fun, I must admit. My new road bike is very enjoyable to ride at 18-20mph whereas my old hybrid, much though I love it, was noticeably harder work around those speeds.

Cycle to work

We woke to a beautiful clear blue sky on Wednesday morning which made it impossible not to cycle to work. We’d intended to mix in some mid-week cycling, and the 9 miles each way for Audrey and 10-10.5 miles each way for me (depending on which roads in the City of London are closed for Crossrail or utility work; currently: all of them) make a couple of decent rides. The ride in is usually at a reasonable pace as we’re often on the late side; the ride home more leisurely. We’ll lengthen our rides home by pulling in some of the interesting sections we’ve found on our long weekend rides as we get further into training.

Oily Hands

The rear derailleur on my new bike seems to have a narrow window for correct shifting and despite only recently having it reindexed it had gone out again. I decided I should learn to fix this myself, so followed this excellent guide (insert wiki books link) and it’s now shifting perfectly again. This would have been much easier with a work stand for the bike – as it was I rigged up a bungee cord from the rear rack to the top of a door to lift the rear wheel up. This worked, just about, but wasn’t exactly the height of ergonomic joy as the bike bounced about like crazy while pushing the pedals around. Think I’ve identified the next bike-related purchase.

Next week

There won’t be a long ride next weekend as I’ll be resting ahead of running a half marathon in Milton Keynes next Monday, with a crazy target of 1h45m.

But before that, it’s the RMT-sponsored cycling to work week, or as it’s commonly known: Tube Strike! So our midweek cycling this week will include at least two cycle-to-works. And if the RMT and London Underground don’t make up sharpish, the following week will see us cycling to work for four days straight. Nothing like a bit of industrial action to kick start our training.

The boring stats

• Distance: 24.1 miles
• Elevation gain: 547ft
• Average moving speed: 12.2mph (Mark), 11.9mph (Audrey)
• Time: 1h55m moving (Mark), 2h00m moving (Audrey), 2h30m total
• Total punctures to date – Mark: 0, Audrey: 1
• Total training miles to date (including cycling to work) – Mark: 266.2 miles, Audrey: 246.0 miles