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did the "Bike Events - Ldn - Cambs/Breakthrough Breast Cancer" ride this morning. Starts at Picketts Lock near Enfield. I rode with my club (Southgate CC) then we rode back. 112m door to door and my knees are feeling it now.
Incidentally, my wife with 2 friends did the Ldn - Cambs bit, though it took them 8hrs - ouch! I got home before her which included an hour at the Cricketers' in Enfield
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^ hey ian, i was wondering why there were so many bikes on the train going back into London yesterday!
did 75m on saturday. 2x Ingatestone TRNC loops. found it really hard going on the 2nd lap as i majorly bonked in that heat. 2nd lap was 6 mins slower than 1st over 35m...1 banana for breakfast and only 1 banana and 1 cliff bar on route + 2 isotonic water bottles was not enough. thankfully i could lie down on the train on the way back to london!
such a nice route though, completely flat and always see more cyclists than cars. lots of horse riders on the road though riding double breasted and without a bell is sometimes awkward to creep up slowly behind. i also saw what looked like a load of turkeys wild in a field but in my delerious state they were probably chickens or something. it's been bugging me though, never seen a load of birds like that in a field before...
anyway i'll be doing the same loop next weekend and this time will have a proper breakfast etc and hopefully that will make a difference.
http://connect.garmin.com/modern/#activity/550098634
then on sunday i rode 25m up the lea navigation canal with the mrs to a village called wadesmill to celebrate my grandads 86th birthday with a family meal. was really nice weather.
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^I think you were right and it was turkeys, this is probably the place. I can't remember where it is exactly, but I took this pic of my mate Ben somewhere in Essex a few years back.
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This time I left early, getting up at the same time as Mrs Earthloop as she got ready for her shift at work, out the door by 0340. The dual carriageways on the way out were fantastic at that time of day, almost empty.
Then there were some lanes, then the A4 to Bath. I like this road, it's mostly marked out as one lane in each direction but the lanes are very wide. Not a single close pass was made.
Rolling down towards Bath: it's very old around there, and most of the roads seem to have been built before flat ground had been invented. The A4 into Bath itself was wedged with stationary traffic with no room to filter safely, so I turned around and went home. I'll actually go into Bath some other time.
On the way home I didn't fancy trying the dual carriageways at a busier time of day, so I stuck with the A4 almost all the way into town.
It was quite hot: I was drinking 1L per hour of isotonic fluid for most of it, and still dehydrating. I tried adding a bit more plain water but that didn't feel good, I think 1L per hour is about my limit.
I did quite similar to that yesterday. More A4 and less lanes though. Didn't get out as early as I wanted (but 0340?! WTF?!) but traffic wasn't bad I guess thanks to the M4.
Decided to go to Warminster instead of Bath and was then detoured due to cops for some reason so ended up in Bradford-upon-Avon which is really pretty with a fun climb out of it. :)
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@bluefoot - That's almost as good as the hay bale pig that used to be out near Moreton promoting British pork :)
I haven't done one of these for ages. This weekend I did the Rural South 300 audax with Corlis Benefideo. It's a 300km audax which was restarted after a few years off the calendar: last run in 2009 I think.
In all honesty I was rather nervous about this. I last did a 300 in 2011 (terrible) although this time I would be on my magic carpet carbon audax bike, not a steel track bike. I figured this would help. I also figured that starting at 6am instead of midnight would also help.
I figured that a rather large amount of climbing probably wouldn't help, but I tried not to think about that.
We decided to ride out to the glamorous Reading Whitley Travelodge from town on Friday night, which was 52 miles. I was a bit nervous about that too, but thought a gentle ride out would warm my legs up nicely for the main event.
We set off from the Travelodge for the start at Beech Hill at 5.30am on deserted roads, and crossed the A33 gyratory as the rising sun sat low in the sky like a giant fireball. We reached Beech Hill for the 6am start, to be greeted by mugs of tea and toast, then set off about five or ten minutes after the* Grand Départ.*
We were straight into lovely empty lanes as we headed west then south to Alresford for breakfast.
After that we headed down to Portsdown for a control overlooking Portsmouth, just after we passed the radar station.
As well as being hilly it had got hot by this point - my Garmin recorded about 28/29 degrees for the rest of the ride before it started to cool in the evening - and we were about 70 miles in. The squash from the back of the organiser's car was very welcome.
We headed inland to the Meon Valley, favoured haunt of Dammits, which was super pretty.
After taking a slight detour to ascend Butser Hill (the highest point on the South Downs) we did a big loop of West Sussex and Surrey, heading back to Alresford before heading north to skirt Basingstoke then heading back to the finish. The hills were relentless until the 180 mile point, when it was pretty much downhill all the way (apart from the uphill bits).
By the pub control at Selborne (157 miles in) I was starting to feel the heat and the hills. My arms were also starting to ache. I thought this was just me, but later found out that everyone else was having the same problem as the road surfaces weren't that great.
We pressed on, passing over a particularly bumpy bit before reaching Alresford to head north.
Unfortunately I noticed 180 miles in that my Garmin screen had gone blank. I thought it had gone flat, but it turns out 800's have a bug where they often throw a paddy at the 300km point and it wiped out the last 25 miles it had recorded.
It would be fair to say that suddenly discovering that I was part of Garmin's product testing team was not good for the morale, and at that point I wanted to throwing the fecking thing in the hedge after repeatedly whacking it with a large hammer and killing it in the face with fire.
Perhaps it was related, although I think it may be more to do with not eating enough at the final control, as after coping quite well for the first 190 miles, I went into quite a difficult place for the last 10 miles and it felt like much longer than that. I had to ask Corlis (who has done about 2500 more miles than me so far this year, to be fair) to slow down a bit, then a few minutes later stop while I devoured a bag of sweets in about 10 seconds flat.
I was very glad to see the warm glow of the lights of the village hall at Beech Hill out of the darkness, where we devoured pasta and cake with decaf tea (providing decaf tea was a real stroke of genius) and engaged in a little audax banter. I didn't have much energy left by this point so it was mostly listening while the more experienced, more energetic riders related tales of the road.
Then a gentle 6 miles back to the Travelodge to make the total for the day 201 miles, and I don't know how much climbing altogether, but my Garmin had recorded over 3000 metres in the first 157 miles before it developed selective amnesia.
It was a great (if challenging) route with lots of beautiful scenery and lovely roads, and I'd highly recommend it if anyone fancies a hilly 300 that isn't too far away next summer.
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+1, good work, fox. Are you back in action properly now?
I hate riding a bike these days as I seem to be filled with endless blind rage about everything and it's very hard to shake it off when someone (always a driver of a motor vehicle) does something silly. Thus BareNecessities persuaded me to take my as-yet-unridden 29er to epping forest to ride on trails without cars and buses intent on killing me every few minutes. I've never been off-roading before so I was not very epic at all, but I did enjoy myself - the level of concentration needed is something i'm not used to. I fell in two (2) ditches, almost lost a shoe, and crashed into a hill (Tbf the hill was almost at a right angle to the ground). I'd been putting off riding the 29er offload as I was worried my general sense of pervasive Meh would kick in there too and I'd end up hating it before giving it a chance so i'm glad blowfish and BN were there to make it feel a bit easier and normal. And I enjoyed myself! On a bike! Hurrah! 10/10!
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I knew it had to happen. The time when I downloaded a route and failed to properly look at where parts of it went. I'm normally pretty good and look at the streetview for all major parts of the route.
I downloaded a 103 mile London Hastings Eastbourne Brighton route which was titled something like 'Pre Triathlon Ride'. I was pretty sure that triathletes only like the flat stuff and have ridden all of the parts to Hastings before so was pretty lazy with my preperations. As all of my long rides start at 12.30pm on a Sunday with limited daylight hours, I need to go pretty quickish to get any decent length rides in.
In Hastings however, this route picked up National Cycle Network 2 (something which I failed to notice on Ride with GPS) which as you in and out of cycle paths etc and off road which slowed my pace considerably.
I did, however, take me along a spectacular section of coastal path coming into Brighton from the Marina end.
Nice ride but the section from Hastings would have been better suited to a cross or MTB.
6/10. Good weather & nice route (if you have time to look at the scenery and appropriate bike aka not a stiff aluminium road bike)
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I'll plot the route and share it, worth a go... you gotta dip your wheel to finish properly though:
http://www.mapmyride.com/routes/fullscreen/486848514
122 miles tho I rode back up to Graig Wen campsite after adding another 3 miles.
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This is very poorly written, and for that I apologise:
Another weekend out and about with the (not so pretentious) Rapha CCNYC gang. This was one of their last rides in support of Rapha Rising and was titled "Hills of Pain". This was specifically a no drop ride, but given the pace last week and the fact that I am a terrible climber, things did not bode well. However, climbing is all about power to weight and I have lost the best part of 6kg since arriving state side 5 weeks ago so perhaps it would all be ok.
I spun up to the shop a bit late, saw some friendly faces from the previous week and set up with just an espresso, a cookie and last nights bowl of rice and peas in my stomach. Usual sort of stuff as we bombed up the Manhattan side of the Hudson river where my rear decided to flat. Two guys hung back as I changed the tube under pressure, they then tried to power us all back to the group but I fell behind - party due to thinking I had another flat and party due to not having the legs. I made a bit of a meal of changing the tube and had filthy hands while feeling pretty flustered and didn't enjoy much of the next 30 miles until we stopped off after some tough climbing for a break where I washed my hands and felt a bit better.
On we rolled up and down some tough hills that I don't remember too much in particular other than being the second last dude rolling up the hill. At the top of one incline we stopped to consider the route and I caught two guys comparing their Cervelo S2s and felt ashamed of my lowly aluminium steerer. On the next downhill bend I was rolling too fast at 35mph and my breaks squealed as I pulled too late and almost drifted onto the wrong side of the road. One of the guys on the S2 (the 2013 model apparently) was not so fortunate and came off his bike and went about 20feet down the side of the hill and into some rocks. We feared the worst, but he ended up only with some cuts and a smashed Cosmic Carbone Rear. The friendly chaps from the bike shop up the road came to pick him and his bike up as the group of about 10 followed behind.
From the shop the gang split into two. 10 people taking the flat route home (myself included) and 3 taking the hills (fair play to them). We had a pretty nice paceline running on the way back and averaged about 25mph for 10 miles or so before becoming disjointed on a main road. From then it became a bit of a free-for-all to the George Washington Bridge and I somehow ended up on the front of a TT pairing pacing the way back down south.
Eventually I trundled into the Rapha shop again to a welcome beer and an overpriced sandwich and promptly watched the TT stage highlights and felt pretty chuffed. Garmin went to shit at some point - I went a bit faster, and climbed a bit more than suggested.
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However, climbing is all about power to weight and I have lost the best part of 6kg since arriving state side 5 weeks ago so perhaps it would all be ok.
wtf 6kgs! you out there in a concentration camp!?
nice write up i enjoyed it. i could particularly emphasise with the part about being under pressure to fix a flat and get grubby hands. i now keep a surgical glove in my saddle bag which helps a lot.
very lucky getting some miles in whilst you're over there, very jealous!
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^Cheers, I've just bought some wider rimmed wheels, so expecting the challenge to be even greater... Trying to use the trip as a health kick. In London I only rode on weekends, now I ride nearly every day. In London I would eat big dinners with pasta or potatoes and all that fun stuff - now I'm mostly on salads/soups and I feel healthier and faster than ever.
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5km between Sweden and Denmark - the Ferry is reasonable priced at 3£ - another fixed century done.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/9980640/fixieking/DKSweden.png -
I'm moving from Stoke Newignton to Herne Hill tomorrow and have the day off to pack up. so obviously I had to go for a goodbye spin around Epping. Beautiful but breezey morning.
I'll actually miss the riding around Essex, although being near Kent will be way better. I shed at tear as I dodged peds stepping into the road, kept vigilant for getting doored, and generally feared for my life on the run home down Lea Bridge Road.
http://www.strava.com/activities/173408148/segments/4043376744 -
^Cheers, I've just bought some wider rimmed wheels, so expecting the challenge to be even greater... Trying to use the trip as a health kick. In London I only rode on weekends, now I ride nearly every day. In London I would eat big dinners with pasta or potatoes and all that fun stuff - now I'm mostly on salads/soups and I feel healthier and faster than ever.
In the US? Really? I plan to go there to eat myself to death one day..
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Tell us about your weekend ride
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Ah, Wales!