Training Rides

Week 5 Part 2: The American Tobacco Trail

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!

Trail before the bridge over I40. Map © OpenStreetMap & Contributors
Trail before the bridge over I40. Map © OpenStreetMap & Contributors

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.

Approximate location of water fountain (blue dot). Map © Open Street Map & Contributors
Approximate location of water fountain (blue dot). Map © Open Street Map & Contributors
Water fountain in car park on Pittard Sears Road
Water fountain in car park on Pittard Sears Road

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.

Team Sheep Just Giving

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.
Training Rides

Week 5 Part 1: Sheeping Around New York

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
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
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
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.

Our route – click with full Ride with GPS stats!

For the bike infrastructure geeks, my thoughts on New York’s cycling environment in comparison with London are below – everyone else should save themselves now and head to Part 2 for the lowdown on our adventure on the fantastic American Tobacco Trail in North Carolina and our famous boring stats round-up!

Thoughts on Cycling in New York

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!).

Right, off to part 2 with you lot…

Training Rides

Week 4: Concentrated Cycling

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.

Team Sheep Just Giving

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.
Training Rides

Week 3: Rest, gentle hills, and BORIS BIKE RACING

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:

Team Sheep Just Giving

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.

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!
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
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!

Decorated Mr Sheep!
Decorated Mr Sheep!

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 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!

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!

Official Tenth Fastest Boris Bike Rider in London – fabulous photo courtesy of Kevin Oakhill, used with permission

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.
Training Rides

Week 2: Rollers and more parks

Week 2, the peak of our first three-week training block, has seen us introduce the wonderful and scary invention “rollers” into our biking lives and our new longest-ever ride of 60 miles.

A quick fund-raising update – a huge thank you to all our wonderful sponsors, we are now just shy of £450 raised for Friendship Works, you’re all amazing! As I mentioned last week, my employer is currently matching all donations so if you haven’t had chance yet, please do donate if you are able!

Tuesday: Rollers

The weather was horrendous on Tuesday, and as we were both very tired we felt it safer to experiment with our latest bike-related purchase – a set of rollers. A device which sits at the intersection between cycle training tools and medieval torture apparatus:

Rollers! The Elite Arion
The Elite Arion Parabolic Rollers – click to see the details on Wiggle

For those unfamiliar (and I counted myself amongst that number until recently) they’re a set of rollers on which you balance your bike. You then have to keep it balanced while pedalling. This is every bit as hard as it sounds; I’ve seen it described as being akin to riding a bike on a sheet of ice and would agree with that emphatically.

They do have some major benefits over other training tools for using your bike inside, however:

  • You just pop your bike on them and start pedalling, instead of messing about attaching skewers as you would on a turbo trainer. It’s less than a minute to set it up and get going, and they don’t wear your tyres out so no need to have special training tyres.
  • You have to pedal quickly and constantly, to avoid falling, so you get a solid workout with no chances to take a breather. This makes them great for tempo training and pretty time efficient. This also, apparently, improves your bike control skills.
  • You have to concentrate incredibly hard to balance, so it’s not as boring as other indoor cycling can be.

After some hilarity, we managed to get ourselves up and running on them and both put in a good 40-45 minute high-cadence workout. You do get the hang of it after a few minutes – my tip: if you find yourself sliding around, pedal harder and faster until the bike settles. And never, ever look down at the wheels; your brain will rebel and you will tip over. Eyes forward soldier!

Thursday: Fast

Audrey did an early-morning spin class to get her high-speed workout, and I added in a 15-mile detour for a full-length lap of Richmond Park on my way in to work. We’re not early morning exercise types (as anyone who knows us will testify), but we are starting to see how getting it out of the way early has many benefits. Early morning deer is almost better than an extra hour in bed. Almost.

As you can see from the delightful T-shape on the map below, Richmond Park is not in any useful way on my route to work, but it was a lovely ride and the park was very quiet at 7:30am. I averaged 17.6mph for the lap (keeping to the 20mph speed limit on the downhills), which I was very chuffed with. Even more amazingly, I managed to get from home, to the park, all the way around it and a mile back towards work before I hit my first red light or needed to give way. That’s my traffic karma for the year used up, then!

My route “to work” via Richmond Park – click for full details/stats

Saturday: Sixty Miles of Parks and Bridges

Our long ride this week, scheduled at 60 miles, followed a similar route to last week, so I’ll spare you the blow-by-blow. Suffice to say, we took in all the same parks (many with longer loops inside them), and managed to throw in a few extra Thames bridges too, crossing Chelsea (twice), Lambeth, Southwark, Blackfriars, and Westminster bridges during the ride.

Our lunch break (after 30 miles) was at the fabulous MacIntyre Coffee for one of their legendary (lawyer-baiting) MacMuffins and an obligatory espresso-based drink. This was a better-sized lunch than last week and we resisted the gorgeous-looking brownies and got ourselves back on the road.

The slog from Battersea Park over to Richmond Park was tough – I was getting especially tired by this point, feeling the three long weeks of training, but we still had around 20 miles to go including a substantial 1.5 laps of Richmond Park (last week we’d done just half a lap). Maybe the brownie would have been a good idea after all!

By the time we reached Richmond Park, we were starting to feel a little fresher (lunch finally kicking in maybe?), and Audrey practised her drafting skills, keeping close behind me to shelter from the headwind. This worked well as we achieved some of our fastest joint laps of the park. It felt great to hold a decent pace this far into the ride, averaging 13.6mph (vs 12.5mph on our most recent joint lap), so a substantial improvement – and this after 50+ miles! Audrey did fantastically well to haul her sit-up-and-beg style bike around at this pace, keeping up with me on my speedy road bike.

This section also included climbing Sawyers Hill twice, which is the first climb of any note on the Ride London route. We found it pretty tough, and it highlighted that we need to do much more hill-specific work in the next block of training. Particularly given that while Sawyers Hill may be the first climb, it is far from the biggest.

We wheeled the last few miles home, for a total distance of 61 miles, at an overall average of 12.1mph – one of our fastest long rides to date, and the longest ever bike ride for both of us. We were suitably shattered when we reached home – none of the “oh we could have done more” feeling from last week – but glad to have finished well and ready for a well-earned recovery week before we start pushing the distances up once more.

I used my cleats for pretty much the entire ride, and had no zero-speed cleat-related falling-over issues once again! Think it’s fair to say I’ve got the hang of them now, although by the end of six hours cycling, clipping out was hurting my left knee. You just can’t win!

The route – click for full RideWithGPS stats and data
Elevation profile – check out those hills at the end!

We’ve been playing about with our new helmet camera (a Contour Roam 2 for anyone interested), so here’s a short highlight video of this week’s long ride.

I’d recommend watching full-screen or directly on YouTube for the best quality.

The boring stats:

  • Weekly distance: 97.4 miles (Mark, not including 40 minutes of rollers), 61 miles (Audrey, not including the spinning of ~15 miles and 40 minutes of rollers).
  • Average moving speed (long weekend ride): 12.1mph
  • Moving time (long weekend ride): 5h03m
  • Total punctures to date – Mark: 0, Audrey: 1
  • Total zero-speed falling-over-due-to-cleat-issues – Mark: 9, Audrey: n/a (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: 691 miles, Audrey: 566 miles.
Training Rides

Week 1: All the Parks!

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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:

JustGiving - Sponsor me now!

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.

Extended ride home via Richmond Park – click for full details

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!

Heading out CS3
Heading out CS3

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.

In Richmond Park
In the beautiful Richmond Park

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 route – click for full RideWithGPS stats and data!

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.
Training Rides

Week 0: Sun, speed and a Big Ride

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.

Tuesday – 25 miles with five fast

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.

The Big Ride

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.

Yes, I really was this unreasonably excited the whole time...
Yes, I really was this unreasonably excited the whole time…

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.

The 29 mile main section of our ride – click for full details!

The boring stats

  • Weekly distance: 69.1 miles (Mark), 65.5 miles (Audrey), of which 41 miles was our long weekend ride, 5.1 miles paced lapping Battersea Park.
  • Average moving speed (Battersea Park laps): 13.6mph
  • Moving time (Battersea Park laps): 34m42s.
  • Average moving speed (long weekend ride): 10.6mph
  • Moving time (long weekend ride): 3h52m
  • Total punctures to date – Mark: 0, Audrey: 1
  • Total training miles to date (including cycling to work) – Mark: 462 miles, Audrey: 421 miles.