Archive for Cycling
June 27, 2009 at 3:44 pm · Filed under Cycling, Event
As promised earlier, here’s the route map for the London to Brighton 2009 Bike Ride, courtesy of RunSaturday.
I’ve also added the speed splits from Sporttracks just to illustrate how painfully slow the process was. I’ve currently got my log set up to show running and jogging paces but its quite interesting to see that I was walking for at least 7 miles of the ride and barely jogging for another 4 miles.
Go early is my recommendation!
And here’s the GPS elevation, its bound to be slightly inaccurate but it gives you a feel for the route.
You can click on both images to enlarge.
Popularity: 13% [?]
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Tags: bike ride, Cycling, GPS, London to Brighton, runsaturday, Sporttracks
June 22, 2009 at 11:50 pm · Filed under Cycling, Event
Call that a bike ride….?
At one point I thought we were actually going to be walking all the way to Brighton.
Experienced L2B’ers had warned me to start the event early but I’m too lazy to get up for a 6am start. I may have had a leisurely 8:30am kick off but I very quickly regretted it. We just never seemed to get going. We crawled through Tooting and Mitcham and out towards the M25 and 3 hours and 20 mins later the garmin beeped to tell me we had just about escaped London.
3 hours and 20 minutes with a bike and we’d only travelled 19 miles and what’s more we were walking already.
The very first sign of an incline and the whole pedal pumping mass ground to a complete standstill. There was no room to weave in and out so everyone one from lycra clad mountain goats to mums on old shoppers had to dismount and walk.
Given the rather lame nature of the incline it was disheartening to say the least. I’m the worlds slowest runner but yesterday I barely managed to cycle above my half marathon pace.
I think there were something like 4 or 5 hillocks marked on the route map and all were fairly inconsequential except for the final horror – Ditchling Beacon.
The crowds must have thinned at some point because I did manage to get back on the bike and for a few brief miles I actually felt the wind in my face and enjoyed the freedom of a crazy hell for leather descent.
The route, which I’ll illustrate when I’ve got it uploaded, had the potential to be a really enjoyable jaunt into Brighton. Apart from the few little bumps that I’ve already belittled it felt like a 54 mile descent to the sea. There was a heck of a lot of high speed freewheeling to be done but I suppose sharing country lanes with 27,000 other cyclists was never going to feel much better than getting stuck behind a convoy of caravans on a bank holiday exodus from Bridlington.
Ditcling Beacon arrived eventually and the one time I hoped for a blockade of walkers, so I could just excuse myself from the trouble of attempting the ascent, they all appeared to have adopted the “walkers to the left” etiquette. There was a clearish path up and I had to attempt it. I didn’t get too far up though before I lost my rhythm bobbing in and out of bailing bikers and I joined them. It was a tough long walk up so I can only imagine it was a challenging ride.
From this vantage point I could see the sea and Dave said he could smell the pier. I thought he said, “Can you smell the beer?” and I actually thought I could. It gave me a little burst of joy and I blasted my way down onto the slip road into the town and didn’t rest until I found myself with beer and chips in hand.
Damn fine chips they were too.
The t-shirt can be viewed on the events page.
Popularity: 14% [?]
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Tags: bike ride, charity, Cycling, Event, Garmin, L2B, London to Brighton
September 30, 2008 at 2:28 pm · Filed under Cycling, Event, Road
I am such a social cretin before an event and watching the city boys arrive at the coach station in their pin striped suits and titanium s-bar bikes didn’t go anyway towards making me feel at home.
I cheered up a bit on arrival at Blenheim when friendly faces appeared out of the crowd and I was reassured that Emma’s Dave hadn’t abandoned me to do the race on my own. Shame Trinny and Susannah weren’t there though; they would have been able to advise me that the short and dumpy tie style wasn’t going to do much for my physique. They might also have mentioned that a thick woollen jacket wasn’t the best sporting wear for the hottest day of the year.
I had received tie training lessons some months ago, in a pub and even through the Stella haze I could remember some of the specifics of the double Nelson knot. Or maybe it wasn’t a Nelson, that sounds like a wrestling move and that was another night and a completely different sort of pub. Anyway, my tie, it ended up in some form of quadruple knotting affair which may even have been stylish if only I were tall and lanky.
So with the race about to start we’d had to lay out our bikes in the folded position, on numbered markers. I was going in the first wave, with Dave two waves and 4 minutes behind me. With the horn sounded we ran to the Bromptons, unfolded, pushed to the track and then set off.
I can’t believe that I’ve gone to so much trouble, practically having my gps surgically embedded in my wrist, and yet “forgot” to set the flippin thing off for the race. Now you are just going to have to take my word for it when I say it was HILLY. Big, long hills!
I may have mentioned before that I don’t do hills, not uphills anyway, but with Dave a mere 4 minutes behind me I didn’t have a lot of choice and had to keep pushing. When I finished the first 6.5km loop I came really close to throwing up on the corner, I thought it would be a slip hazard though and with Dave still behind me it could be seen as unsporting.
One of the guys in my wave had a video camera on his helmet and captured some of the beauty of the course. I was breathing so hard, sweating gallons and concentrating too much on the waves of nausea that I didn’t notice my surroundings.
It’s a bit noisy so I suggest you turn the volume right down, but before you get bored, pull the slider across to 4 minutes and wait for me to appear like a bat out of hell. He managed to capture almost a full minute of my backside flying down the hill with my coat tails flapping in an aerodynamic fashion.
I crossed the line in front of Dave but the gap could be measured by Brompton lengths rather than minutes but we both looked rather worse for wear.
The results are just in:
Lap 1 15:48
Lap 2 16:57
Total for the 13km 32:45 (Dave’s time was 30:26)
In terms of positions I’m 268/364 overall or 21/44 for the women. So I’m actually in the top 50% for a sport! It beats swimming.
Popularity: 28% [?]
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Tags: Brompton, Brompton World Championships, folding bike, GPS, Stella, Swimming, tie
August 3, 2008 at 11:56 pm · Filed under Cycling, Running
Running and therefore blogging seems to have turned into quite a struggle recently. I get to the 2k point and feel as though I can’t go any further. My body feels like lumpen clay but I think my battle is as much mental as physical. Running can be a tough nut to crack sometimes.
With only 9 weeks to go before the Great North Run, I can’t afford to be struggling with 2k runs, I need to take a grip of this thing. I set out this morning on a 6k route, started whining at 2k but pushed on to the final turn off point where I managed to persuade myself to take the extended option which brought me home after 8k. A small battle won, and one that must be built on over the next few weeks.
There’s plenty of inspiration around at the moment, Speedracer has just completed her first Ironman distance tri at Vineman after months of badass training, and Rosie Swale-Pope features in this months Runners World after completing her run around the world (well she hasn’t quite completed it yet but is back on British soil after running for almost 5 years). These are people who know how to tame the quitting demons!
While I may not be running very much I’m certainly getting in plenty of cycle practice on the Brompton – I’ve got to get some speed training under my belt as I now have competition at the Brompton World Champs, Emma’s Dave has thrown down the gauntlet and must be beaten.
I’m still struggling with that saddle though. It’s beautiful and all but it’s a weapon of torture. I have it from good authority that it will weather in time, moulding itself to my own personal contours, thereby morphing into the most comfortable saddle in the world. In the meantime it is leaving me with day long pins and needles – most disconcerting.
I had an appointment with the ortho surgeon last week about my dodgy back issue and I was grilled about possible neurological complications. One of the questions put to me was “Have you experienced numbness or pins and needles in the saddle area?” Well, what could I say?
I obviously answered incorrectly as I ended up flat on my back having my bits and pieces tickled with a feather! When a guy came into the cubicle with a gloved hand and a protruding finger, I leapt off the couch and backed out pointing at my Brooks saddle and begging for mercy. I avoided the internal interrogation but still have to go and have an MRI – it would be much cheaper to invest in a gel saddle cover.
Popularity: 18% [?]
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Tags: back, Brompton, folding bike, GNR
July 17, 2008 at 8:56 pm · Filed under Bikes, Cycling, Equipment
I have just entered the Brompton World Championship race to be held at Blenheim Palace.
Catch that, a world bloody championship!
Anyway, rules state I must wear a suit jacket, collared shirt and a tie.
I don’t have a tie – disaster!
Anybody got a spare tie that would complement my delightful bike and wouldn’t be impaired by a gallon of sweat?
Popularity: 21% [?]
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Tags: bike, Brompton, folding bike, WBC08
July 4, 2008 at 8:16 am · Filed under Bikes, Commuting, Cycling, Equipment, Road
Here’s a quick pictorial introduction to the new bike recruit.
The Brompton is squeezing alongside the other two bikes and trying to carve out a niche for itself.
So far it’s doing very well and I’m beginning to worry about what I’ll do with the other two.
I wonder if I could have a go at a sprint tri with it? It certainly needs to have a go at some sort of challenge event just to cement it’s street cred.
A marvel of British engineering.
Here it is in transition mode – notice the sweet pea holder built into the Brompton bag – how useful is that?
Just to continue the bike porn theme, here it is in full glory.
I’ll just finish by plugging the WizzBike – the best bike shop I’ve come across so far. Superb service, it’s based in Brentford but well worth the trip if you are interested in Bromptons, folders or Pashleys.
Popularity: 27% [?]
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Tags: bike, Brompton, Brookes saddle, folding bike
July 11, 2007 at 7:23 am · Filed under Cycling, Event
The tour came to London this weekend and I was lucky enough to be on the marshalling team for Sunday’s Stage 1 from London to Canterbury, not that I felt particularly lucky when my alarm went off at 4.45am.
I was shipped out to Woolwich, not one of the more delightful spots of the route but it was downstream of Greenwich which means that the cyclists were in the midst of the race proper as they passed by unlike the Depart fictif played out through central London.
Being a marshall was a good wheeze, I was showered with loads of tour goodies – t-shirt, medal and baseball cap, and was ferried out to one of the best viewing spots available. The crowd were so well behaved I didn’t even have any marshalling type activity to do, which left me a bit of time to play with my new phone and catch a video of the proceedings. Unfortunately I was holding the phone the wrong way round and haven’t fathomed out how to rotate it so you’ll have to flip your monitors over if you want to see this in its full glory.
The roads were closed from 5am which gave the early morning runners the opportunity of running their own private London marathon route. Where supporters were already lining the streets the runners got a few rallying calls of Allez allez.
Popularity: 16% [?]
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Tags: t-shirt
May 27, 2007 at 8:11 am · Filed under Cycling, Event, Road, Running
I tried to capture the essence of todays stampede but I just ended up getting in the way and the movie ends as the camera gets knocked out of my hands. Don’t you just hate home movies anyway?
After the run (that I didn’t do – again), I went off on the bike in search of hills.
Looks like I found one.
I just stopped halfway up to let those lot catch up and took the opportunity to take in the views – not my breath, in case you were wondering.
I’m not a fan of hills but I’ll definately be back again, as just round the corner from here is the bestest ever cake shop. My eyes were bulging out of their sockets at the massive, sweet, treacley delights on offer. Certainly worth the effort and the bonus prize is finally a route that warrants the terrain feature in google earth.
My homicidal GPS thingumy didn’t let me down either, before I knew it, the blinkin thing had directed me onto the slip road of the M25. I had to hit my max speed of the day, 36mph, trying to get myself back on course, which in this case meant the middle of a particularly hairy dual carriageway, before the huge truck barrelling along behind me, forced me to reach even greater speeds. I didn’t enjoy that one bit, shame I didn’t have my heart rate monitor on as I’m sure it would have recorded a new panic induced max.
Total distance: 75km (46.6 miles)
Popularity: 23% [?]
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Tags: BPTT, GPS
May 25, 2007 at 10:42 pm · Filed under Commuting, Cycling, Gadgets
A whole new commuting challenge lies ahead of me. My new job is flippin miles away, just teetering on the edge of the metropolis called Greater London. If I lose my balance I’m liable to stumble into the central reservation of the M25.
Thought I better take a ride out today to check out my route – don’t want to turn up both sweaty and late on Tuesday.
It’s a heck of twisty, turny trail that’s gonna take me forever to memorise, luckily I have a host of GPS gadgets in my bottom drawer or I think I’d still be out there shredding my paper map in a fit of frustration. Todays choice of handlebar thingumy is the GPSMap 60C, a pretty cool mapping device, that lets you get completely lost, confident in the knowledge that you can just follow a trail of dots back to your house. I always come very close to death when I ride with this though, I spend too much time chasing the arrow on the screen and too little time checking what the other nutters are doing on the roads.
Total round trip comes out at just over 26 miles, which means, if I want to stay in the running commute club, I’ll have to build myself up to half marathon distance pretty sharpish. Good grief.
Popularity: 26% [?]
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Tags: commute, GPS
May 20, 2007 at 8:37 pm · Filed under Cycling, Event, Road, Running, Triathlon
Not much to report on the running front this week, it’s all been quite a struggle. Deege explains the runners eternal battle with the mind body dichotomy better than I ever could. I’m afraid to say that while Deege managed to win her battle, I just bailed. Out on my long run my body started grumbling and managed to convince me that it was only 2 km away from self-destruction. Strangely, that happened to be the exact distance between my disintegrating body and my front door, so thats where I took it. Long run turned into the shortest run this year – pants!
I went to Bushy Park yesterday but I didn’t even manage a run there. It was my turn for volunteering. Great job that, I can imagine it catching on, and I got an event t-shirt for my new page. It’s quite good fun watching sweaty, staggering blokes struggling to remember their names as they come to register their finishing positions.
It’s also quite impressive to watch the start from the front, I thought I was going to get gathered up in the stampede and carried to a new pb along with my laptop. I might try plonking myself at the front next time I run and see how far I get before I actually have to start running.
Photo by Rodiogirl
So a frail running week but I have been building back up with the cycling, managed 100 k this weekend. After BPTT my intention was to conduct a reccy of the Thames Turbo Triathlon bike route. I must have taken the wrong exit out of the park as it took me 6 k to find the start at Hampton Outdoor pool. I never manage to find that place I think they shift it each time I visit, which wouldn’t be too much trouble at all.
Great route, jolly scenic and all that, just need to remember to turn left as you pass the Southwark and Vauxhall waterworks. I think thats what its called – crazy name considering its in Sunbury.
I cut the route a bit short as I was caught short and I was miles from home. I think I’ll try and get the full route sorted next weekend, if I can find the pool a bit sooner.
Here’s the official route map, nicked from the Thames Turbo race pack. Still two more left this season I think.
Popularity: 42% [?]
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Tags: BPTT, t-shirt, thames, Triathlon
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