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:

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!

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!

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.

Week 1 of our training period ended this Sunday, and Tuesday saw spinning (Audrey) and speedy commuting (Mark), Thursday an extended ride home via Richmond Park, and Sunday our first successful 50 mile ride. As of this week, we’ve now completed over 500 miles of training each!

We’re also starting to ramp up the fund raising for the fabulous Friendship Works – a massive thank you to everyone who has supported us already, we’ve raised over £300 so far, with over £120 added in the last 48 hours alone. You can read all about why we’re supporting Friendship Works in our welcome post, but if you haven’t had a chance to sponsor us yet please do, they are a tiny but highly effective charity making a real difference to society and the children they help and are deserving of all the support you can give – and your sponsorship is a real encouragement to us as we train. All donations are currently being matched by my employer, so now is a great time to donate – with the matching and gift aid every £1 donated is worth £2.25 to Friendship Works! You can donate in dollars or pounds on our Just Giving page:

Or, in the UK, you can quickly donate £10 by texting BAAA88 £10 to 70070 – if you use the text service, do remember to follow the instructions in the reply to allow Gift Aid to be claimed on your donation!

Tuesday fast

Tuesday’s rides were fairly standard for me, to and from work trying to keep up the pace between the traffic lights – let’s call it enforced interval training! Audrey had meetings that made cycling to work impossible, so she substituted in a high intensity spinning class. I also did leisurely-paced rides to and from work on Wednesday.

Mid-week deer

Our mid-length, mid-pace ride this week was out to Richmond Park on our way home from work on Thursday (scoping out a part of the route for Sunday’s 50 miles – using LCN37 then NCN4 to reach the park). This ride totaled 24 miles for me, 22 miles for Audrey, which we found quite tough on top of the 9-10 miles we’d already done to work; we were both pretty much wiped out by the end. The park lap averaged 12.7mph, not super fast but given how tired we were, not unhappy with it.

Our first successful 50 mile ride – all the parks!

Our weekend ride took in eleven of London’s wonderful parks and commons. We started with the Wandle Trail as usual, which goes through King George Park (park no. 1). We then went east to Battersea Park (2) and, from there, zig-zagged back and forth over the river using Chelsea (northbound), Lambeth (southbound) and Southwark (northbound) bridges to head east while avoiding the hectic Parliament Square and Embankment. By blind luck this crazy hopping back and forth neatly avoided a host of road closures for the London 10k, which we’d been totally unaware of when planning our route.

Heading east to Tower Hill (via getting lost around the City for the second week running) we joined and followed CS3 around 7 miles to Beckton, the eastern-most point of our ride. 19.5 miles down at an average of 11.6mph and we were still feeling fresh, so far so good!

We got ourselves onto the Greenway (3) and followed it west to Stratford, at which point we promptly got lost trying to follow the Greenway diversion, adding an extra mile. Nevertheless, we soon found ourselves in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park (4), then headed west to Victoria Park (5) and London Fields (6). 27.5 miles in, averaging 11.3mph, it was time for our lunch break at Broadway Market.

We rather over-indulged, sitting in the lovely sunshine eating delicious flatbreads and cakes, but we were “soon” on our way again (well, about an hour later, all said and done – it was quite a wait for food).

West via the City, Embankment, and CS8, we got back to Battersea Park (7, if you count it twice) then followed LCN37 and NCN4 through Barnes Common (8) to reach Richmond Park (9). We did a single short loop in Richmond Park and, still feeling quite fresh, did the final leg home, ticking off Putney Heath (10) and Wimbledon Park (11) on the way. Overall, 52.8 miles at an overall average of 11.7mph – with the last 10 miles averaging 12.1mph.

This was a great ride for us for a few reasons. Firstly, we kept up the average speed well throughout the ride, with the last ten miles being the fastest of the day. Our speed on other long rides has tailed off markedly towards the end, so finishing strongly and still feeling good was a great boost. Whether due to the faster mid-week rides or the longer outings starting to add up, something is starting to feel better.

After our last attempt at a 50 mile ride ended in injury, we were also very glad to reach the distance without any major knee issues or other niggles.

Another positive was getting our food intake better organised – having a planned lunch stop saved time otherwise wasted looking for somewhere to eat and meant we ate at a sensible point in the ride (near the middle rather than the end), both of which have been problems previously. It will also have been a factor in us still having energy at the end, even with riding against a super-strong head wind for ten miles in the middle. We need to work on minimising the time taken for the break and perhaps eat a little less, but the structure seems right and the benefits of eating properly during the long rides are clear.

One final good thing: I used my clipped-in cleats for extensive parts of the day and didn’t come close to falling over at any point. Yay! Progress!

And with that, on to next week’s 60 mile long ride, the last week of this first “building” phase before we have a cut-back week to solidify our gains.

The boring stats

• Weekly distance: 131.9 miles (Mark), 83.8 miles (Audrey, not including the spinning of ~11 miles).
• Average moving speed (long weekend ride): 11.7mph
• Moving time (long weekend ride): 4h30m
• Total punctures to date – Mark: 0, Audrey: 1
• Total zero-speed falling-over-due-to-cleat-issues – Mark: 9, Audrey: n/a.
• Total training miles to date (including cycling to work) – Mark: 594 miles, Audrey: 505 miles.