Ride London 100

I got out of bed at half three, had porridge (yuck) whilst I looked out of the window at the dry night sky.

I was tempted, briefly, to swap the deep crabon back on, but sense prevailed and I stuck with the alloy clinchers.

On the way through South London at just past four in the morning it was fun to keep encountering groups of cyclists.

I shared the Blackwall tunnel with one other chap, which was a bit intimidating - after last year I kept expecting a car to come howling round the corner leading to much crash, so dead etc. But if was fine.

Came out the other end to find that the signs directed us onto the A12, so cycled along with one other chap as car after car passed us at 50mph+ with the horn blaring.

Welcome to Stratford!

Followed the signs to my wave load area, double checked it was correct with the marshal (who swore blind it was), and then tried to keep warm in the rain whilst eating Torq bars (see last year).

Eventually it became apparent that the marshal has been lying through his teeth, and myself and the group of others who had been taken in by his assured manner had to pelt down the outside of the start pens to get to our correct load area in time, which we thankfully did.

We left at 6.02, as the rain intensified, thankfully no Blackwall tunnel redux.

Initially I spent some time in pace-lines, joining one that I spotted Jammy in - however, the rain was getting stronger now and the riding was getting sketchier.

We were averaging 27mph with people moving left and right without looking, others trying to follow a friends wheel and diving through gaps that made other riders have to take evasive action - this with street furniture, corners, more rain and ped-islands in the mix.

I dropped out of the group, and immediately felt a lot safer - I met Jammy after we'd finished to learn that he'd come to the same conclusion and dropped out of the group shortly after I did.

I settled down to a fast cruise, tip-toeing down the descents as other riders took them at speed and (relatively frequently) hit the deck.

Coming round a bend shortly after Kingston there was a chap in the road waving a wheel, asking for an inner tube - I stopped and gave him mine (I had patches) and hoped that this would break the curse of the P_nctr God that I had been suffering from in recent weeks.

I pressed on, sometimes meeting someone else travelling at roughly the same pace and taking turns on the front with them until we came to a rise or sequence of corners that split us up.

I was averaging slightly over 20mph now, making sure to shove food in my mouth every 20-30 minutes. I ended up with a huge lump of wrappers shoved up the right hand leg of my shorts, which I quite enjoyed emptying into a bin at the finish.

The rain was playing with us by now- it'd tail off almost to nothing, then redouble it's attempt to wash us off the road. I wore my sunglasses for the whole ride - why I really don't know.

Toward the end now and I'd been on my own in the wind for some time, letting the faster packs stream past- I decided that I'd get into the next one, did so and we worked together until Kingston.

At this point the rain increased in intensity until it became laughable - the road flooded, any thought of spotting manhole covers went out the window and I started using the Force in earnest. The downpour continued in earnest as I shot through Putney, to hear a friendly shout as BDW spotted me.

At this point I was fairly tired, but worlds away from the broken man of 2013 where I'd bonked hard at the halfway point and never really recovered.

Pushing on I finally came too the Mall, crossed the line, got my medal and then tried in vain to get my touch-screen phone to work in rain that was at this point solid water with slots of air in.

This didn't really work, so I briefly sheltered in the Cross-Rail gazebo, called the Mrs, and then went to the Raphe as they had a roof AND coffee.

TL:DR, it was tough, it was in some ways better than last year, I'm slower than I was last year, it rained lots.