I did my first challenge ride today, I joined a group of about 2000 to do the London to Oxford bike ride. It is a charity ride organised by Bike Events, www.bike-events.com, most people are sponsored but you can pay your entry fee and join in for fun and sport.
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I found it to be a bloody challenging ride and I have a lot of respect for any novice rider who took this on and completed it. Although it is my first ride of any length – 60 miles – I do cycle 100 miles a week consistently.
It was a lovely day and the route took us through some beautiful places but crikey moses there were some hills.
I am quite good at the short hills where I can just power up and over but give me a hill like the one outside Marlow that just seems to go on forever and I die – I got about half way up, ran out of gears, struggled to my feet to give it my all, which wasn’t much by this point and then just keeled over. Should have got the triple Chameleon!
Check out the route profile:
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So for every up hill struggle there was a downhill of equal proportions, I hit 32.4 mph before wetting myself and throwing on the breaks. I didn’t notice myself decelerating much though – very scary. I better replace my break blocks before I ride again.
10 minutes before arriving in Oxford I was alone and exhausted a could easily have burst into tears and then on the corner appeared a marshall who told me I was nearly there and that I was only the 10th woman to near the finish that day. This spurred me on, and I managed to pass another woman before the finish line, making me 9th to finish. Of course this isn’t a race and we all start at different times so it doesn’t count anyway but all the same I felt good.
Overall riding time for the 60 mile trip was 4hrs 45 mins and I spent another 40 mins resting at assorted stops. Maybe I will be able to break 4 hours next year?
It was a really well organised ride, every corner was signposted and most had marshals to help at the junctions and provide motivation, there were a number of pit stops as well, a particularly welcome one was at a primary school providing hot dogs burgers and home made cakes – delicious. There was mechanical back up too.
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