On Sunday we did our final long ride – a gentle 41 mile ride out through central London, enjoying the quiet roads of a Sunday morning. Our planned route was rather broken by the Embankment being closed for the British Triathlon, but no matter – it’s our turn for the closed roads next weekend!
Fundraising Update
It’s been an amazing week for our fundraising total, now standing at £1200 raised, which, after my employer matches it, will mean Friendship Works receiving £2400 in total. We’re really touched by all of your generosity over the last few months, and thank you all for putting up with our constant nagging to donate! Any final stragglers, you can still sponsor us here.
Looking ahead
Next week, the last week before the big day, we’ll be doing lots of sleeping and a couple of very short hard rides to keep our muscles ready without using too much energy. We’ll also be finalising our food plans for the day (another post coming up about that soon, it takes a surprising amount of planning!) and generally fussing about being worried that we’ve forgotten things.
Almost there…
The boring stats:
Weekly distance: 80 miles (Mark), 66 miles (Audrey).
Average moving speed (long ride): 12.8mph
Moving time (long ride): 3h11m
Total punctures to date – Mark: 0, Audrey: 2
Total zero-speed falling-over-due-to-cleat-issues – Mark: 9, Audrey: n/a.
Total training miles to date (including cycling to work) – Mark: 1580 miles, Audrey: 1329 miles + 6 hours spinning.
Monday 21 July – Sunday 27 July. T-minus 2 weeks to Ride London. Total Team Sheep Miles: 2764; Total raised for Friendship Works: £693
Just a quick update this week. After the peak of our training last week banished some fears of the broom wagon, we’re now starting to taper down and, as we were away for the weekend, we only got two rides in.
Our first few days of matching your donations for Friendship Works have gone really well with £60 for us to match thanks to our new supporters! Still £140 in our matching budget, though – if we can get that in the next few days it will mean an extra £800 going to Friendship Works compared to a week ago! If you’ve been meaning to donate but haven’t had the chance yet (you’ve got the tab open, you’ve been meaning to get round to it, must do that soon), get that credit card out and do it now – remember every £1 donated will mean £4 for Friendship Works for the next couple of days, and you can donate directly in dollars or pounds so no nasty card fees to pay.
Friday morning was our last really long training ride – 55 miles. As we had a train to catch in the afternoon, we went to Richmond Park and lapped around in various directions until we had the distance we needed.
The most appropriate registration plate, spotted in Richmond Park
This gave us our fastest long ride by far – a moving average of 14.1mph! It felt really good to be able to maintain a decent pace over this distance of uninterrupted riding – and bodes very well for the day. It was the longest ride we’d want to do without stopping for a short lunch break, and Audrey faded some in the last 10 miles likely because she hadn’t eaten enough while we pedalled.
Keeping well fuelled is one of the hardest bits of this to get right, so it was good for us to be reminded of the importance of paying close attention to it.
Click for full Ride with GPS stats
Next week
As we near the end of our training, shorter rides that maintain the intensity are the order of the day. So we’ll be doing two or three quick blasts next week including some hills and some fast riding, then a 35 mile easy long ride next Sunday to keep us in the game.
The boring stats:
Weekly distance: 76 miles (Mark), 74 miles (Audrey).
Average moving speed (long ride): 14.1mph
Moving time (long ride): 3h52m
Total punctures to date – Mark: 0, Audrey: 2
Total zero-speed falling-over-due-to-cleat-issues – Mark: 9, Audrey: n/a.
Total training miles to date (including cycling to work) – Mark: 1500 miles, Audrey: 1263 miles + 6 hours spinning.
Monday 14 July – Sunday 20 July. T-minus 3 weeks to Ride London.
Total Team Sheep Miles: 2613; Total raised for Friendship Works: £633
This was it. The peak of our training, the longest ride before the day, the highest weekly mileage at over 140 miles each. After last week’s dreadful 69 miler we needed some good rides to give us the confidence that we can do this without being swept up by the broom wagon – the course-closing vehicle that chases us slower cyclists around the route, eating people who drop behind 8h30m pace like some 1980s video game baddie.
The broom wagon is something like this, we assume… Pac-Man turned to the dark side
With Audrey still needing some time to get used to her new bike, we were unsure how this week’s rides would go, but conscious that this was the last week for gaining fitness before our taper period we threw ourselves in with gusto: fast riding, hill repeats, race pace, then the longest long ride until the day: Eighty Miles, with full race-day preparation to test everything out.
Read on to find out how the week went, and whether we got further away from Mr Evil Pac-Man Broom Wagon (there’s more drawings throughout as a reward for wading through my wordy-prose)!
Give £1, Friendship Works get £4
But first, a quick fund-raising update. We’ve sailed past our minimum target – thank you all who’ve donated – however as we really believe in what the fantastic Friendship Works do, we’re going to keep bugging you. They’re a small charity without the fund-raising clout of the big boys, providing vital long-term support and mentoring for disadvantaged children in London on a very limited budget. Putting our money where our mouths are, we will personally match any sponsorship received for the next seven days (or £200, whichever comes first)!
So for every £1 you donate, we’ll chuck in another £1, and my employer will match both, meaning £4 for Friendship Works!
We’re trying to reach £2,000, enough to train five new mentors, so give a few pounds or dollars here at Just Giving – for our American readers, you can donate directly in US dollars so there are no additional fees to pay for US credit/debit cards.
They’ve ridden how far?
A few fun facts: In training for Ride London, between us we’ve now cycled the distance from London to Newfoundland in Canada (~2475mi) or Baghdad (~2550mi). Individually, Audrey has just sailed past Reykjavik, Iceland or Tirana in Albania (~1175mi) and I’m nearing Greenland (Ittoqqortoormiit – try spelling that after a pint) or Athens (~1490mi)!
Right enough messing about, on with this week’s rides.
Tuesday: Fast around Richmond Park
We went out on Tuesday for a fast full lap of Richmond Park and set a new record for us lapping together – 27m11s at 15.1mph average! Audrey was starting to get the hang of her new bike and was able to maintain a much better pace up the hills, so it was a really encouraging ride.
Wednesday: Hill Repeats
After meeting the hills a couple of weeks back and our dreadful long ride last week (also fairly hilly), we can certainly benefit from more hill training – if nothing else, pain now should give a nicer race day! Our hill repeats involved us repeatedly cycling up and down Ridgeway Place in Wimbledon, which goes up the same slope as Wimbledon Hill, the last climb of the route.
I did ten ascents for a total of ~1000ft gain over 6 miles, Audrey nine slightly shorter climbs for a total of ~750ft over 3.3 miles, in both cases taking around 30 minutes. For context, Leith Hill is ~500ft over 1.5mi and Box Hill ~600ft over 2.7mi.
Audrey’s hill repeatsMark’s hill repeats
We maintained a decent pace but were wiped out by the end, a very hard session.
Friday: Mid-length race pace
It was always going to be difficult to fit a 40 mile race-pace practice in after work. We didn’t leave the house until 20:00 making completing it inside Richmond Park without getting locked in a serious challenge.
Using the 5.7mi shorter lap (which has approximately the right elevation gain to be a microcosm of Ride London), we needed to get round 5 times. We started well, but as jet black clouds rolled in it got dark much faster than anticipated. A fantastical storm was throwing enormous lightning bolts down on the far side of London, amazing to watch but thankfully well away from us!
Doom-laden sky over Richmond Park
It stayed mostly dry but, as we neared the end of our third lap, we could barely see the road – 14.3mph average so far though! We left the park to complete our ride on street, where at least there were lights to help. Our bike lights are definitely more for being seen than for seeing with!
A couple of laps around Wimbledon Village and alongside the Common, maintaining a decent pace, then the batteries in my light finally gave up and we headed home for a total distance of 35 miles. We’d managed an average moving pace of 13.9mph over the 30 miles from entering the park, giving us badly-needed confidence that we may yet escape the evil Pac-Man broom wagon.
Hmm, we might just get away from him!
A well-earned rest day on Saturday, then all that remained was the big one!
Sunday: 80 miles of London
Our plan for this longest of long training rides was to make it as much like Ride London day as possible – getting up at the same time, eating the breakfast we intend to eat, and setting out at our official start time of 08:12. Our breakfast-of-champions will be McDonald’s pancakes with syrup (pretty much 100% carbohydrates) and a portion of porridge (mostly slower-burning carbohydrates). So at 05:35 this Sunday, we hauled ourselves out of bed, drove to the nearest McDonald’s and loaded up, sitting in the car to eat it as we will on the morning (though someone else will be driving!).
Back home to finish our prep and get on our bikes – carefully noting down each thing that our tired brains forgot so on the morning we can be zombies and still get to the start with the right underpants on. The newly-upgraded SheepTracker was activated, now including the total distance each of us has travelled, to give our dear viewers a better idea how we’re doing! Average speed and total time coming soon…
The upgraded SheepTracker – go to http://markandaudrey.co.uk/sheeptracker/ to see us live!
At 08:12 we rolled out of our gate to start. Two turns of the pedals and I realised I had the wrong shoes on! Another one for the list… quick dash inside to rectify and we were on our way.
The route used some of the best bits from our much earlier pan-London epics, adjusted to avoid fiddly or busy bits, keeping sections that give us the best opportunity to go at a reasonable pace.
Route Details
Wandle Trail to Battersea Park, 2.5 laps there, through a gloriously quiet central London to CS3, all the way out to its easternmost extent (the last mile of which was completely covered in broken glass) then west along The Greenway. We then reversed that whole section, back east along The Greenway then west along CS3, through central London again (now busier unfortunately), another 1.5 laps of Battersea Park (increased by a lap as we didn’t repeat the broken-glass-strewn top of CS3), then over to Richmond Park for two short laps and one final full lap – including the steeper climbs up Sawyer’s and Dark Hill to simulate the late climb of Wimbledon Hill at mile 91 of the Ride London route, before heading back home to finish.
We started strongly – a touch stodgy feeling from the large breakfast, but that soon passed leaving us glad of the energy it gave. Remembering to eat every 30-45 minutes (mostly Haribo with the occasional Frusli granola bar) and drink plenty, we ticked off 25 miles in good time – 13.3mph moving average, 1h52m moving time. A quick comfort break at a convenient Sainsbury’s (who couldn’t actually sell us anything thanks to Sunday trading laws – like a mirage, you can look at the water but you can’t buy the water) then on our way. We continued out along the Greenway and back, stopping again at the same Sainsbury’s around mile 34 to finally procure the water.
Just shy of 40 miles in, we stopped for lunch – I’d squeezed jam sandwiches into my saddle and top tube bags which surprisingly hadn’t got too smushed. Audrey had a fluffernutter (marshmallow fluff and peanut butter sandwich: definitely an American thing) and a jam sandwich strapped to her pannier rack.
Across London again, we continued to make good progress, though I was tiring slightly by the time we reached Battersea Park for the second time so had my first energy gel of the day (a Science-in-Sport lemon-and-lime, if you were wondering). This helped a little, but with hindsight I don’t think I’d drank enough: about 900ml in nearly five hours of riding. Audrey had been more sensible, and as I went on I upped my drinking. This should be less of a problem on the day as we’ll have far more opportunities to get water.
Reaching Richmond Park, I found a a second wind after another energy gel and drinking a lot more, although as the heat rose we both ran out of water, necessitating a quick stop to buy more. Our final full lap of Richmond Park, climbing Sawyer’s Hill the steep way then Dark Hill, provided a good late challenge and finally kicked the last of the energy out of us. The few miles back home were fairly miserable, and I had the energy gel with caffeine I’d saved for near the end. This helped clear my head and we finished up feeling very tired but very accomplished – the overall pace was really strong, even near the end we were able to average 14mph over the 18 miles in the park.
We did it! 81.4 miles (or 80.8 miles according to Audrey’s computer) in 6h18m moving time, 7h50m total time.
Audrey’s new bike worked very well; we were able to share the work at the front and maintain a much better pace along the open stretches than in our previous rides. Begone, evil broom wagon Pac-Man!!
We’re away! BAAAAAA!!!!
Looking Forward
Next week we’ll start to gently taper, with a long ride of 55 miles on Friday morning. After that, we’ll be cutting back more sharply to get ourselves ready for the day. At this point, we feel ready from a fitness point of view, so it’s all down to careful preparation and maintenance now.
Three weeks until we Ride London and we can’t wait!
The boring stats:
Weekly distance: 146 miles (Mark), 144 miles (Audrey).
Average moving speed (long ride): 12.9mph
Moving time (long ride): 6h18m
Total punctures to date – Mark: 0, Audrey: 2
Total zero-speed falling-over-due-to-cleat-issues – Mark: 9, Audrey: n/a.
Total training miles to date (including cycling to work) – Mark: 1424 miles, Audrey: 1189 miles + 6 hours spinning.
Monday 7 July – Sunday 13 July. T-minus 4 weeks to Ride London.
Total Team Sheep Miles: 2323; Total raised for Friendship Works: £523
Big news this week: Audrey took delivery of her new bike on Friday – a Revolution Country Traveller touring bike from the Edinburgh Bicycle Cooperative. A little lighter than her previous sit-up-and-beg city bike, it also has dropped handle bars which will help with maintaining higher speeds, be better for drafting, and hopefully give a much better position for climbing those hills.
The other big news is that we’ve now both completed over 1000 miles of training! Zoom zoom zoom…
Tuesday: Fast
We followed our usual Tuesday procedure: spinning for Audrey and Richmond Park lapping for Mark (2 laps, first one a new PB of 21m31s, 19.0mph).
Friday: New bike familiarisation & attempted mid-length race pace
The new bike was delivered to Audrey at work; a little light assembly and adjustment and we were on the road shortly after 8pm. Heading to Richmond Park for our race-pace practice, we found both the road and pedestrian gates locked at Roehampton Gate and a number of bewildered-looking people with bikes trapped inside. The pedestrian gate normally stays open late, so we’re not sure why this was, in any case it meant no park riding for us – and an awkward climb out for those stuck inside. We did a loop around Wimbledon Village to get a few more miles in, then headed home – just 17 miles under our belt.
Saturday: 69 miles of hills and lanes
We had another long one pencilled in for this weekend, and Audrey needed a good long ride to get accustomed to the new steed. So we planned a 65-mile route around Surrey taking in some of the area we’d covered last week, some of an excellent Lost Lanes route we’d done last year, and a selection of other bits to join it all up.
Audrey tackling Box Hill on her new bike “Emmy”, an emerald green touring bike from the Edinburgh Bicycle Coop
For some reason, we really messed up our leaving procedure and headed out at about 13:30 having had only two pieces of toast to eat each. This turned out to be a terrible move – the first 20 miles of the route felt very sluggish, the next 30 just about passable, a climb up Box Hill went quite well but the last 20 miles back from there were awful, and I was particularly struggling.
It had clearly been raining in London while we’d been out, and to finish the ride off perfectly, we decided that following the muddy Wandle Trail rather than the road from Morden back to home was a great idea – thus adding both stinging nettle stings and very muddy bikes to the long list of things to feel miserable about.
The only saving grace, despite lots of stopping and feeling generally awful, the overall pace wasn’t terrible at 11.6mph and we completed 69 miles. We did learn a lot about how important it is to eat properly before heading out on a long ride, though – and it is better to have learnt this now than on race day.
Our miserable route – click for full Ride with GPS statsThe elevation profile – 10 points if you can spot Box Hill
Next Week
After this week’s disruptions, we’ll need to do some extra next week. It’s the peak of our training plan before we start to taper down, and our last chance to really push out the distance.
To that end, Tuesday we’ll both be going to Richmond Park for a fast sprint lap, Wednesday will be hill repeats up & down Wimbledon Hill, Friday will be a 35-40 mile race pace practice, and Sunday will see us doing the longest ride before the day: 80 miles!
The boring stats:
Weekly distance: 124 miles (Mark), 86 miles + 1hr spinning (Audrey).
Average moving speed (long ride): 11.7mph
Moving time (long ride): 5h54m
Total punctures to date – Mark: 0, Audrey: 2
Total zero-speed falling-over-due-to-cleat-issues – Mark: 9, Audrey: n/a.
Total training miles to date (including cycling to work) – Mark: 1278 miles, Audrey: 1045 miles + 6 hours spinning.
Monday 30 June – Sunday 6 July. T-minus 5 weeks to Ride London.
Total Team Sheep Miles: 2112; Total raised for Friendship Works: £523
We’ve been extending the distances over the weeks, but looming on the horizon are the two major climbs of the route. Leith Hill, from the southern approach taken on the day, is a 500ft climb over 1.5 miles with an average gradient of 6.9%, max 12.9%. Box Hill, made famous by the Olympic road races back in 2012, gains just under 600ft over 2.7 miles with an average gradient of 4.1% up its Zig-Zag Road. Last week’s long ride had a lot of elevation gain, but the majority of it was very gradual, so for this week’s major ride, we decided it was time to slay the demons and finally meet the hills.
With the Tour de France winding its way through the Yorkshire hills, it was our very own Team Sheep mountain stage.
Tuesday: Fast
We started the week with our usual combination of spinning (Audrey) and fast Richmond Park lap (Mark; new PB of 22m30s, average speed of 18.2mph).
Thursday: Mid-length race pace
Continuing our mid-length race pace practices, we did another session at Richmond Park – the park section totalling 17.8 miles in 1h17m – 13.9mph average, a new best for us riding together, out of a total ride of 30 miles.
Saturday: Meet the Hills attempt 1
They say there’s no such thing as the wrong weather for cycling, just the wrong clothes. Two miles into our first attempt at cycling out to the Surrey hills and we definitely had the wrong clothes (and arguably in my case the wrong bike). A massive downpour started, with black thunderous clouds stretching out to the horizon. Our planned route followed the Wandle Trail / Avenue Verté south for the first 12 miles – tracks which are muddy even in the dry; in the wet the right clothes would be diving suits! Our brakes immediately filled with mud and the idea of descending massive hills for the first time with ineffective brakes didn’t appeal, so we cut our losses and headed back home.
We re-planned the route to avoid that section, following roads and paved tracks instead, so if the weather on Sunday was equally bad at least we wouldn’t be as muddy. While it might rain on the day, it won’t be on muddy tracks for tens of miles. l do need to work out how to carry a light-weight waterproof though, as it was chilly in the wet.
Sunday: Meet the Hills attempt 2
A hearty breakfast at Mel’s of Earlsfield set us up well for our re-planned ride, and we took the the train out to Effingham Junction to start. Our revised plan would have us going over five major climbs finishing with Box Hill, then cycling back home via Epsom and Sutton.
The five hills of our route
Away from the station and out into the Surrey lanes, the weather was delightful and the scenery lovely. Our first climb (1 in the above diagram: White Hill / White Downs, 665ft over 4 miles, 29 minutes) started soon after leaving the station and was followed by a ridiculous 18% descent which we would have to come back up later.
Leith Hill
We started our first ascent of Leith Hill (2) approaching from the north and heading south. This will be the descent on Ride London day, a more gradual affair than the southern face. It rises 539ft over 3.2 miles and took us 22 minutes.
Descending the western side, we found that the Ockley Road is closed and impassable until early August (hope the work finishes on time; 26,000 people on bikes will be along here on 10th August). This means a five-mile road detour (or a mile of rocky footpath) to reach the start of the climb. The detour was pleasant and what passes for flat in this area, so gave us time to recover before hoofing it up the hill again.
The ascent of Leith Hill from the south (3) rises 500ft in 1.5 miles – an average of 6.9% with a maximum ramp of 12.9% coming near the top. It’s the steepest part of the Ride London route, and on this first attempt it took us 17 minutes including a bit of a pause three-quarters of the way up. Audrey suffered some knee pain as we neared the top, a worrying flashback to problems from months back, but luckily these cleared up as we continued.
Over to Box Hill
Heading back north, following the Ride London route down from the top of Leith Hill, we were faced with a choice – to get to Box Hill we either had to ascend the 18% slope of White Downs that we’d flown down earlier, or cycle along the fast-moving A25. The Ride London will follow the A25, but it will be closed to traffic. So, up the hill we went (4). We walked up the steepest part on a “footpath” – though it was more like rock climbing than walking. We didn’t feel bad about walking this – it was our first major day of hills, we still had Box Hill to go, and most importantly we didn’t want to aggravate Audrey’s knees further this close to the event with a slope that is beyond anything we’ll meet on the day.
The roads between the top of White Downs and the bottom of Box Hill, following the Surrey Cycleway route, are delightful – great scenery, gently rolling hills, and not much traffic – we made good time. Reaching Box Hill we made our way up without any major problems – while it is a long ascent, the gradient is very even, so you can just keep grinding away. Remembering not to be distracted by the National Trust café – which is at a false summit a mile short of the top – we finished the 2.7mi, 600ft climb in 23 minutes, with no stopping. It felt surprisingly manageable – a much easier climb than Leith Hill. We rolled back to the café for a celebratory slice of Victoria Sponge (and one of the worst coffees I’ve had in years), pausing to admire this wonderful view.
View from the top of Box Hill
We stopped for too long and ate too much cake (the slices were enormous and we had one each; the National Trust clearly know their market here), so we were both pretty sluggish when it came to starting the ride home, but after a while we picked up the pace again and enjoyed the long, mostly down hill, 20 miles back home.
Humongous wedge of Victoria Sponge!
We’re happy with our first day in the hills, completing nearly the full amount of climbing that we’ll meet on the day. After 52 miles, we still felt broadly fine. An encouraging ride!
Our route – click for full Ride With GPS statsThe all-important elevation profile – we have certainly now met the hills!
The boring stats:
Weekly distance: 112 miles (Mark), 87 miles + 1hr spinning (Audrey).
Average moving speed (long hilly ride): 11.3mph
Moving time (long ride): 4h35m
Total punctures to date – Mark: 0, Audrey: 2
Total zero-speed falling-over-due-to-cleat-issues – Mark: 9 – think I’m finally on top of this! Audrey: n/a.
Total training miles to date (including cycling to work) – Mark:1153 miles, Audrey: 959 miles + 5 hours spinning.
Monday 23 June – Sunday 29 June. T-minus 6 weeks to Ride London.
Total Team Sheep Miles: 1913; Total raised for Friendship Works: £523
After our adventures in the US last week (part 1, part 2), the first half of this week was lost to travelling and jet lag. Somehow Audrey managed an early morning fast spin class on Thursday while I was barely conscious after only 2 hours sleep, we then did a fast Richmond Park ride on Friday and Sunday saw our first attempt at a 70 mile ride through the beautiful Peak District.
Friday: Richmond Park race pace practice
Our medium length mid-week rides are now practicing riding at our intended race pace (~13-14mph). With the difficulty of finding places to cycle without lots of stopping, these will be at Richmond Park more often than not. This time, we did two full-length laps, averaging 13.0mph. The full lap of the park includes a third more climbing per mile than the Ride London route (average 58ft/mile vs 43.5ft/mile), so for the same effort we would expect to go slightly faster than this on the day. Pretty happy with this pace, given how tired we were.
Sunday: 70 miles in the Peak District
We’re trying to get more hills into our rides, and as we were in Sheffield for the weekend the Peak District seemed an obvious supplier of such. Audrey identified a series of trails on former rail lines which looked like they fit the bill perfectly. Our intention was to ride the trails and, along the way, form a plan to combine sections to reach 70 miles once we knew what they were like in terms of elevation and surfacing.
The High Peak Trail and Tissington Trail together form a large wishbone shape, and have over 30 miles of wide, mostly decently surfaced cycleable paths.
High Peak & Tissington Trails
The High Peak Trail begins (from the eastern end) with an almost comical 1:8 gradient; a steepness that no train could ascend under its own power, and at the top are the remnants of the winch system which hauled trains up this ludicrous slope. We we skipped half of this climb by starting from the Black Rocks car park instead of the start of the trail – hills we may need but two miles of 1:8 at the start of a 70 mile ride didn’t seem like a great idea!
From the top of this climb west, the trail has a gentle up-hill gradient throughout most of its length. It’s wide and, in the most part, reasonably well surfaced for cycling with a selection of different gravel-like surfaces. It has an annoying number of gates in its lower half, which break up the flow, and it crosses a couple of minor roads; the upper half has fewer interruptions. There are cafés and toilets located at Middleton Top and Parsley Hay along this trail.
The Tissington Trail, heading south from the intersection with the High Peak Trail, is gently downhill for over 12 miles, entirely uninterrupted – no gates, no roads to cross, just endless cycling heaven. The surfacing is better than the High Peak – still mostly variations on gravel path but more consistent and wider too. Our joy at finding such a long stretch of uninterrupted cycle route in this country was enough to overcome the slight apprehension of having to cycle up hill the whole way back after we’d gone down!
Once we’d ridden the length of the High Peak and all the way down Tissington (around 33 miles), we had all the lengths we needed to do the maths: to get to 70 we’d need to go from the bottom of Tissington right back to the top of High Peak (in effect an uninterrupted 16 mile climb), back down to the branch with Tissington and down ~2.5 miles of that again, before finally going back up to the High Peak and following it back south to the car. As I’m sure you’re all confused, here’s a fantastic diagram:
Our ad-hoc plan to reach 70 miles
I’m sure that’s much clearer now.
Audrey had enterprisingly prepared us some jam sandwiches from the hotel buffet breakfast, and as we started the climb back up the Tissington Trail these provided a great boost. We’d also kept ourselves topped up throughout the day with jelly babies, Haribo, Frusli bars and a cake break at the café at Parsley Hay. No running out of fuel for us this time!
It all went reasonably well, although by the final few miles back to the car we were, as you’d expect, tiring fairly badly. Our first 70 mile ride in the bag, all that remained was strapping the bikes to the back of the car and a three hour drive back to London, via a massive pile of food from McDonald’s!
Our final route – click for full Ride with GPS statsCheck out the massively long descent/ascent in the middle there!
The boring stats:
Weekly distance: 99 miles (Mark), 99 miles (Audrey).
Average moving speed (long ride): 12.0mph
Moving time (long ride): 5h50m
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) – Mark: 1041 miles, Audrey: 872 miles + 4 hours spinning.
Thursday 19 June – Sunday 22 June. T-minus 7 weeks to Ride London. Total Team Sheep Miles: 1665; Total raised for Friendship Works: £478
For our adventures in New York in the first half of the week, see Part 1.
Fundraising Update
Before we get into our long ride in the North Carolina heat, a quick fundraising update. We’re nearing £500 raised now thanks to all our fabulous sponsors – if you’ve not had chance yet you can join them here and donate to Friendship Works in dollars or pounds. Read our welcome post for why we’re supporting this fantastic charity! And with that, on with the ride…
The American Tobacco Trail
We were in Chapel Hill, North Carolina from Tuesday and the newly-contiguous American Tobacco Trail (ATT) seemed ideal for a long ride. Starting from downtown Durham, it runs 23 miles through Durham, Chatham and Wake counties along former rail lines. Until recently the first seven miles, from downtown Durham, were severed from the rest of the trail by interstate 40 – after years of construction problems, a bridge finally opened this spring. The ATT is one of many former rail corridors now being converted for use as a bike/run/walk trail across the US – they have the benefits of relatively level gradients and, often, going places people may actually want to travel between, so make great cycling routes.
There isn’t much information out there on the distances now available on the ATT – we knew some of it was paved but not how far, or what the surface was beyond that. We also saw several different total lengths, so weren’t even confident about that. Hopefully this post will be some use to others wanting to use the trail, as we found the answers to these questions along the way! With the heat hitting 94°F / 34°C, we planned to head south along the trail until either the good surface ran out, we got too hot or we ran short of water, then double back, hopefully giving us a total of around 45 miles.
We hired a hybrid and a road bike (all they had in our size) from Durham Cycles who were thoroughly helpful, doing full top-to-tail bike checks before we set off and giving lots of advice. We swapped the two bikes between us throughout the ride.
Carrying plenty of water but keeping everything else to a minimum (no backpacks in this heat!), we hit the road. It was two miles to the start of the trail, on-street but not busy in the mid-morning, and we reached the trailhead at 11:30, just in time for the hottest part of the day.
The first seven miles of the trail, most of the way to I40, are consistently excellent – wide and very smoothly paved. The trail gently meanders through the houses and trees of Durham (then wider Durham county), rising up over some fabulous former railway bridges but never steeply so.
Occasional minor road crossings are handled with zebra markings; the traffic being generally quiet this arrangement worked fine. A couple of larger roads are crossed in this section too – Martin Luther King Jr Parkway had us use the pedestrian crossing, while Fayetteville Road simply had a button to make an orange light flash – not the most useful intervention.
We maintained a decent pace through this first section, me taking the first shift on the road bike then swapping at the five mile point. The shade of the trail was keeping us out of the worst of the heat and the cooling rush of air while cycling made it quite pleasant, though whenever we stopped it was like being in an oven!
Before reaching the new bridge over I40, there’s a slightly confusing section where the trail disappears (the rail corridor is long gone here under houses and shops) – just enough signs take you along a windy path and short stretch of sidewalk but a few more would help!
Over the bridge we went (surprisingly bumpy for being brand new but certainly better than trying to walk or cycle across an interstate – see the short video below) then the high quality trail continues through Southpoint shopping centre, the last major civilisation for many miles! If you’re riding the length of the trail, this is the last chance to pick up supplies, as there’s essentially nothing after this point.
The quality of the trail changes at each county line – through Durham County (to Scott King Road, 10.5 miles in) it is smoothly paved, nicely wide, and has the names of cross streets painted on the ground at each road crossing with distance markers every quarter mile, to help you keep your bearings.
In Chatham County (proudly maintained, according to the signs, by the Town of Cary) it is again well paved, but mostly unmarked. The last section, starting at New Hope Church Road (15 miles in) and running 7.7 more miles, is in Wake county. This has a good quality fine gravel surface which was easily rideable (although I would avoid it in the wet if you’re on a road bike). Not nearly as nice as the paved sections that precede it, but better than a lot of gravel paths out there.
After Southpoint there are no places to buy supplies (indeed there isn’t much of anything except nice woodland riding!), so we were very thankful to find a water fountain (with a handy bottle filler, no less) in the car park at Pittard Sears Road, 13.5 miles in. We made extensive use of it to refill and cool off – on the way out we’d used over half our water by this point so would’ve needed to turn back without it. Huge thanks to the Triangle Rails to Trails Conservancy who installed it (and REI for funding the equipment purchase); it meant we could press on much further and also have the confidence that we could fill up on the way back too.
At the far end, the trail ends at a large trailhead carpark, and the worst surface we encountered all day leading from the trail to the car park – loose rough gravel up a steep hill. The total trail length was indeed around 23 miles (my GPS recorded 24.7 including the 2 miles we’d done to the start), and this marked the half way point of our ride.
It was getting very hot by now, and as we made our way back, the sun was more directly overhead so we had little escape. By the time we got back to the water fountain (34 miles overall) we were very nearly out of water again, thanks again Triangle Trails!
From there, it was a more comfortable ride back, a bit more shade being available and plenty of water to keep us cool and hydrated. The only problem – after 40 miles of baking hot cycling we’d had no food whatsoever. By the time we got back to Southpoint we were both feeling the effects of this – low energy levels manifesting themselves in sluggish cycling and fuzzy brains!
We stopped at Target and stocked up – a massive bottle of Gatorade (mmmm carbs! Also: I love the US – a bottle that big in the UK would need a mortgage and a credit check!), a huge salted pretzel (mmmm salt! mmmm carbs!), and a big old bag of Sour Patch Kids (mmmm more carbs!). Just what we needed! With that consumed, we knocked out the final few miles back to the trailhead in Durham, and the final two on-street miles back to Durham Cycles. As we pulled off the road, the odometer ticked from 49.9 to 50.0 miles, a perfect bit of serendipity to end the ride!
Our overall route – click for full Ride with GPS stats
It was an excellent ride on the trail, we averaged 12.8mph moving pace, and felt good most of the way (with the exception of our self-inflicted problems caused by our stupidity in not taking any food with us!). We would highly recommend the ATT to anyone in the area looking for a good cycle route away from traffic.
After returning the bikes, we recovered over espresso milkshakes from Market Street Coffee.
The boring stats:
Weekly distance: 95 miles (Mark), 95 miles (Audrey).
Average moving speed (ATT ride): 12.7mph
Moving time (long ride): 3h55m
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: 942 miles, Audrey: 773 miles.
Sunday 15 June – Wednesday 18 June. T-minus 7.5 weeks to Ride London. Total Team Sheep Miles: 1615; Total raised for Friendship Works: £468
This week we were in the US, and our cycling adventures included a lap of Manhattan and 50 miles in the North Carolinian heat on the American Tobacco Trail (see Week 5 Part 2). We weren’t keeping to a particular plan, just riding when we could and sightseeing while doing so.
Sunday – CitiBike Adventures
We had a gentle introduction to New York cycling via the Citibikes – the same clunking beasts as London’s Boris bikes although more expensive at $10 (~£6.20) a day rather than £2 (~$3.20). We made good use of them, though, to get about and see New York. Much like cycling in London, you see so much you’d normally travel under on the subway – the interesting areas between destinations.
Citibike Geekery
The terminals lead you through access purchase in a much clearer way than London’s, but we had problems with access codes only working half the time – each time we got two codes, more often than not one wouldn’t work and we’d have to wait 2 minutes to get another.
We headed down 9th Ave (1.9mi), which (for the bike infrastructure geeks amongst you, everyone else skip to the next paragraph 😉 ) has a parking-protected cycle track most of the way south, and a designed-in left-hook conflict every second block. I could see problems with this arrangement if drivers weren’t paying close attention when turning but, to their credit, those we encountered were very good, giving plenty of space.
We docked and pottered around Greenwich Village, an older area of New York much more human-scaled than most of the city – predominantly 5-7 storey buildings from the 1800s in wonderful condition. A quick coffee stop at New York’s Rapha Cycle Café then we picked up bikes to continue south, using the greenway along the Hudson to reach the World Trade Centre site (1.9mi). The memorial, comprising two pools in the footprints of the two towers, is very well executed – both haunting and visually captivating.
Left Turn Conflicts
I wasn’t a fan of the left turn arrangements for traffic used along the 8th & 9th Ave cycle tracks, although they were very consistently applied at every intersection, so once you knew what to expect there were no surprises; quite a contrast to London where every junction has a slightly different arrangement to learn the safest way through.
Our third jaunt took us over the Brooklyn Bridge and back (3.1mi) on the shared boardwalk – surprisingly-well-disciplined pedestrians keeping to the correct side of the line demarcating the cycle lane despite it being very busy – then a final trip all the way up 8th Ave to 42nd Street which has a northbound cycle track similar to the southbound one we’d taken on 9th, with the same left turn arrangement.
Ten miles overall, at a relaxed pace other than the last trip which we knew would be close to 30 minutes (where extra charges would kick in – an expensive game at $4 each!). The light phasing is such that lifting the pace slightly gets you through 2-3 extra blocks each time before hitting a red, and we made it just in time (29 minutes)!
Monday – A Lap of Manhattan on the Waterfront Greenway
We hired cheap hybrid bikes for the day (from Bike’n’Roll) to ride the Manhattan Waterfront Greenway, which follows the perimeter of Manhattan island with a few on-street sections where, for various reasons, a waterfront trail hasn’t yet been possible. It encompasses the Hudson River Greenway (running the length of Manhattan on the west side), the Harlem River Greenway on the upper east side, and the East River Greenway along the central and lower east side. The East River and Hudson River greenways connect via Battery Park at the southern tip of Manhattan to complete the loop.
The Manhattan Waterfront Greenway – click for full map
Starting the day at west 42nd Street and heading north, the Hudson River Greenway was excellent – a wide dedicated cycling track with great views over the Hudson and very few cross streets (signal controlled, with green for cycling almost all the time). We made our way to the George Washington Bridge, which looked mightily impressive (if rather like it was made from Meccano) from the underneath, then up a very steep trail to reach the northern extent of Manhattan – Washington Heights – which was surprisingly hilly. I suppose the name should have clued us in to that one! The video (0m45s) below shows a few brief snippets of this excellent trail:
The George Washington Bridge
A set of steps (soon to be replaced by a ramp) took us down to a short, well-signed, stretch on-street to cross northern Manhattan and reach the Harlem River Greenway for our trek south. Interestingly, this area felt very unlike a big city; despite being on Manhattan island it was much like anywhere else in the US, a surprise to us both this close to central New York.
The Harlem River Greenway wasn’t nearly as good as the Hudson trail – mostly shared with pedestrians with some protected on-street sections. There weren’t many people, on bike or foot, using this stretch – though mid-morning on a Monday is unlikely to be it’s busiest time.
The trail runs out at 148th street, dead ending into a northbound-only on-road cycle lane. We didn’t see any signs, so we followed our noses (and Open Street Map) through Harlem to 120th, where a couple of blocks east we found the start of the East River Greenway.
An interesting island in the East River caught our eye and, as it had a pedestrian/cycle bridge, we went to investigate. There were horses, a tennis academy, a sports stadium, and some restrooms, but no lunch, so back over the bridge and inland for a slice of pizza and some Peach-O gummy rings. Lunch of champions!
Fresh with energy after our scientifically-proven athletic lunch, we continued south on the East River Greenway until it came to an abrupt end at 63rd Street where the UN Headquarters blocks the trail. Relatively poor signing again hampered us, and this section had busy traffic with little more than sharrows (“share the road arrows”, painted on a normal traffic lane) in the way of bike infrastructure until 36th Street where the trail re-starts. Apparently this section will be much improved in future; the UN are funding $73m of cycling improvements in return for an expansion of their site, which should make a huge and much needed difference.
The trail varied after this, occasionally very narrow but mostly a decent size with dedicated cycling space, running alongside the East River. It frequently uses space under elevated sections of the monstrous FDR Drive, a horrible urban motorway along the east side of Manhattan which wasn’t as horrible underneath as you might expect. Perhaps the joy of having a decent wide dedicated cycle track counterbalanced the downsides of being under a motorway…
As we got towards downtown, there were many more people about, running, walking, skateboarding and cycling – including hand cyclists and recumbents. It wasn’t hard to see why; it was a great space and largely uninterrupted until Battery Park.
At Battery Park we paused at another Bike’n’Roll to pump up – it seems both bikes were ~30psi under recommended, no wonder they felt sluggish! With much easier pedalling, we picked our way through Battery Park and around the southern tip of Manhattan, the trail temporarily lost to a construction area. Once past that, there was a delightful section back on the Hudson where a peaceful pergola structure, entwined with vines and replete with many places to sit, had great views out to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.
The Statue of Liberty & Ellis Island from the Hudson River Greenway
From here, the Hudson River Greenway took us back to our starting point – the southern half being every bit as good as the northern stretch where we’d started. Overall, around 35 miles done at a leisurely pace of ~10mph including much stopping and sightseeing.
My overall impression of cycling in New York is that it was, surprisingly, less stressful than cycling in London. The drivers, while massively aggressive to each other, were uniformly excellent around cyclists (and pedestrians) – giving plenty of space and being very patient, holding well back until there was room to pass. It’s possible that we were just lucky on this front, but in 45 miles of cycling in London (including a Monday evening rush hour) you’d almost certainly get at least one or two idiots, even if “just” following you needlessly closely when there’s no hope of passing.
The infrastructure was mixed – the best of it was truly excellent (better than almost everything in London), and there was a substantial amount of good protected stuff which, again, would put much London provision to shame. There is also a lot of mediocre provision (sharrow claxon, narrow-shared-space claxon, provision-just-running-out-and-dumping-you-at-random claxon) and massive gaps between cycle-friendly streets mean there isn’t, as yet, a comprehensive network.
Also, a one-way system covering pretty much every street with no cycle exceptions made navigating to specific places surprisingly difficult. It would likely get easier if you lived here as you’d learn the directions of the roads (or maybe not: we saw a lot of the locals using the buffers between the cycle track and parked cars as DIY contraflow lanes on 8th & 9th Aves – the fact that there was space for this speaks to the decent width of those lanes!).
Monday 9 June – Sunday 15 June. T-minus 8 weeks to Ride London.
Apologies for the late post for Week 4, we’ve been away so haven’t had chance to write it until now.
We’re building back up the distances and intensities after our recovery week, so back to our usual pattern of a short fast ride, rollers, or spinning early in the week, a medium length, medium paced ride mid-week, and a substantial long ride towards the end of the week – 50 miles this time. However, a trip away meant a compressed cycling schedule, needing to get the full week’s worth done by Friday lunchtime.
Tuesday – Fast
Audrey went for the high-intensity spin class option for her fast-paced training this week. I, meanwhile, went a little over the top – a fast commute was going to be all, but then this twitter conversation occurred while I was sat writing last week’s post :
Thanks for the prompt “Super Cycling Man”, it was indeed a beautiful evening and I’m glad I went. However, the “quick” extra ride was 20 miles… and our next ride was due Wednesday. Eeeek! Overall for the day – 39 miles at an average 15.2mph.
Wednesday – Medium pace, medium distance
As you’ve no doubt noticed, we’ve used Richmond Park for an awful lot of our training and would be doing so again on Friday, so Audrey quite sensibly suggested we do something different on Wednesday. There’s not many options for doing a decent paced ride without lots of interruptions in London, so we went for Battersea Park – another stalwart of our training – planning three laps in each direction at a decent pace (~12 miles, plus ~6.5 miles each way there and back, giving us 25 miles).
Our plan was thwarted upon reaching the park as a Cancer Research Race for Life run was taking place. It was winding down as we arrived but there were road closures still in place and many hundreds of pedestrians strolling along having finished their run. This was not conducive to the decent-paced cycling we needed, and in any case we have no desire to be those annoying people zooming on bikes through crowds, scaring everyone. We had a chat with a friendly police officer who said the roads would be reopening in about half an hour. So we did a few miles of road cycling before returning for some back and forth in the now-quieter Battersea Park to finish up. Overall we did 21 miles, with a slower than intended pace of 12mph due to all the disruptions.
Friday – a brief 50-miler before lunchtime!
And so on to the challenging one. We still needed to get our 50-mile cycle in for the week, but also needed to be back home by midday to shower, finish packing and leave for our trip at 1pm. The plan: a very simple ride to Richmond Park where we would do laps of different sections until we reached the required distance.
So, up at the crack of dawn (by our standards) and on the road at 8am, giving us four hours to complete the distance. The simple route was intended to have two benefits: no time wasted wayfinding, and no time wasted at traffic lights, junctions, and so forth – both of which were very important with such a tight time window!
We started with two full 6.7mi laps of the park – Audrey’s first in our Ride London training as until now we’ve skipped the very hilly section from Ham Cross to Robin Hood Gate when riding together. It was good to get these hills in, but probably not the wisest choice after only four hours sleep. The first lap went okay but after that we got increasingly sluggish – the lack of sleep combined with low energy and caffeine levels had us fading fast.
We struggled through to 24 miles and had a quick cake & coffee break, then after another shorter lap with fewer hills (and still feeling sluggish), we had our first experiment with energy gels (horrible things but they did seem to work wonders for us this time). As we were running out of time, we also decided to use a relatively flat section of the park and repeatedly loop back and forth along it. This may have been boring, but as the energy gel kicked in we finally lost the sluggishness and lifted the pace substantially.
We were running critically short on time by the end, but finished in the park and rode the final six miles home to complete 50.9 miles in 4h20m – a substantial improvement on any previous long ride in terms of total overall time, but leaving us very little time to shower and pack before heading on our trip!
Our route, click for full details
Overall, a bit of a mixed ride. The first half was pretty darned awful – sluggish feeling and slow pace. The overall time of the ride, at 4h20m, would also be too slow if we simply double it to give a vague projection for the full 100 miles. However, the last 20 miles we did at a much higher pace, showing that we can recover from a sluggish start and, if we extrapolate out from the pace of that section for another 50 miles we get a much happier 7h50m projection for the 100 miles. We need to do many more of these morning rides to work out how to lift that sluggishness sooner – maybe starting with an energy gel with caffeine, maybe having more sleep for the several nights before…
Next Week
We will be away from home for much of next week, so it should be an interesting few rides in new places! What that will mean for our pace and plan remains to be seen…
The boring stats:
Weekly distance: 111.5 miles (Mark), 72.1 miles (Audrey).
Average moving speed (long ride): 13.1mph
Moving time (long ride): 3h52m
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: 847 miles, Audrey: 678 miles.
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:
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.
Elevation profile – click for full Ride with GPS data
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.
The Boris Bikes ready for us to race!
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…
The course
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!
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 leading trio
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!
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.
Two sheep on two bikes, thousands of miles training, then the 100 mile RideLondon this August in aid of Friendship Works
