1,000 Miles!

Last weekend while cycling through Richmond Park in southwest London, I reached a very special milestone.... 1,000 miles on the bike this year!

(Or, more accurately, 1,610 kilometers since that is what my cycle computer measures... but 1,000 miles has a better ring to it).

I bought the Boardman in September 2010 and probably only had the chance to ride 30 km on it before winter began, so the majority of these miles were done in 2011--which is not even finished yet! And since I (well, Alberto if we're honest) installed the cycle computer on my Boardman as soon as I bought it, the odometer also displays the lifetime distance that the bike has done.

The first 1,000 miles of this year has included:

• 2 punctures (both as a part of the puncture from hell)
• 2 clipless falls
• 3 rides of over 100 miles
• Approximately 5 hills walked up
• 10 counties of England

Fittingly, Richmond is where I put the first miles on the Boardman back in September when I was still getting used to the drop handlebars and skinny tires.

Wonder how many more miles I can fit in in 2011?!

100 miles in Essex

Saturday July 30th, Liverpool Street, Central London, 8 a.m.

Twelve machacas meet up in this London hotspot for a 100 miles of superb riding to Maldon, a coastal town on the Essex county. Amongst these riders there were all sorts of bikes, including a very fast Optima recumbent with aero wheels that put all of us to shame on the flat and downhill bits (and without pushing too much)!!

Photos courtesy of simgsxr from the Cyclechat

The way out of London passed through Stratford, Woodford, Chigwell and soon into quiet country lanes. The route was put together by the leading rider Abs



About 40 km from the start, we had our first stop at a very nice tea rooms in Blackmore, where another rider (on a very nice old roadie from the late eighties) joined up. After topping up on caffeine and cake (still working on drinking tea! like most Brits seem to do) rolling countryside followed.

Photo courtesy of simgsxr from the Cyclechat

In less than 4 h riding time we reached the shore in Maldon, or rather, the canal shore. Pints, fish & chips, bacon rolls, and other delicacies were eaten under the gorgeous sun.

After Maldon the group split into people riding to southeast London, north London and central. The second bit of the route was busier than expected, and we even had two incidents.



The first one featured by a couple of jerks jumping red lights on a big car that then decided to threaten us with a big wooden stick?! Only a few miles after that we encountered another group of idiots that pulled out on us. Luckily enough, these guys got told off by one of the riders, who happened to be a police officer...at least they seemed to get the message! The vistas coming from the very east London of Canary Wharf and the City were superb, as was seeing all the new developments of the Olympic Park. Unfortunately we were riding fast and I did not have the time to take any shots. Not long until all this area is brought to hectic Olympic life! Nearly 2 h after crossing the M25, we got to our starting point in Liverpool St.

Overall, I rode over 180 km, 7:20 h riding time (almost the same amount I dedicate every day to writing up the bloody thesis, but a lot nicer!), 23.8 km/h average, 6 water bottles (and 8 wees).

Cycling in the southwest of England

On Saturday 2nd of July I finally managed to cycle in the southwest, an area that is pretty much unexplored for us, in favour of the south/southeast and north of London. This time I joined some of the people that we cycled with down to Brighton on the night ride.

The day started, as usual, way too early for me. We had agreed to meet by 7 am in Waterloo, meaning 6 am wakeup! We got the groupsave and attempted to get on the first train down to Winchester, but the very kind southwest train staff said that no more bikes on said service, and so on to the next one. Fortunately this was only running 5 min after the original one, so we all met up in Winchester by 8:45 am. By 9 am we were on our way out of this little town, and on to a bit of a dodgy roundabout, where we found an amazing bike path following the valley of the river Itchen. Beautiful rolling countryside surrounded by crops (which included Xmas trees!). For the first 1/3 of the ride we barely saw any cars, and the ones that we did, were surprisingly nice to us, waiting after the peloton until it was safe to pass

The peloton itself was formed of interesting folk. 4/9 had titanium bikes (split between Van Nicholas - one of my ever dreamt ones, Enigma, and Burls), the rest were carbon framed, one american military version of a folding mtb (riden by Will) that weighed in at 20 kg or so! and my not-so-cool aluminium Canyon.

We carried on past Selbourne, where we stopped to take a view of the landscape. In the distance we saw the Geodesic domes of Oakhanger, looking like random sized golf balls scattered across the fields. We had seen these stuff already near Cromer,in Norfolk. The whole area is big on military camps, and in fact, Tim, the organiser, had spent a good deal of time here. About 30 miles into the ride we had our first stop. Of course, everyone had a tea (we are in England!) while I downed an orange juice.

We then sped up a little and were soon entering the Surrey hills. At this point the average came up to 23 km/h, which seemed kind of easy to maintain when in a medium size group. The pub lunch was very nice, along the river, in a spot that will be packed in the Olympics when Cavendish et al fly past the area. Soon after the lunch, we hit the second hill...Ranmore Common. It got pretty steep at times, but the roads were empty and stimulating.

Box Hill and its Zig-zag road was next. This hill will be "climbed" 8 or 9 times by the pros on the Olympic road race. It was a gentle incline, that put all of us to shame when we saw a real lady machaca no wearing lycra, with crappy shoes, with a very old fixie (including saggy chain) going up the hill at a very reasonable pace...yes, on a fixed gear! I had to congratulate her! We encountered tons of fellow cyclists resting on the grass, taking in the atmosphere of the place. We took the group photo with the nice views in the background, went for a speedy downhill and were soon crossing the M25. After this the ride only got worse and worse, passing through Kingswood, Outwood, Chipstead Valley and Coulsden. And then into Croydon! This was certainly the worst bit, and took us almost 2 hours to get home.

All in all, it was a very nice ride (thanks to Tim Decker for organising and for some of the pictures shown here) except the last bit past the M25. I managed to put in 160 km, with an average of 22.1 km/h, maximum of 54.5 km/h and 7h 6min on the saddle. The overall climbed totalled 6000 feet, which is not bad at all!

On our way to Audaxing

Sunday 5th of June. Weather forecasts predicted a lot of sunshine on Saturday and above 25 degrees, which at these latitudes, is somewhat way too hot. Sunday had overcast skies and a maximum of 18 celsius in the Cambridgeshire/West Suffolk area, so we were in for yet another grey day.

I had been looking at several routes on the internet to the southeast of Cambridge, area that we have already cycled in a few times before and felt in love with. Time has come to test Lucy on her first attempt to cover 100 milles in a day. East Anglia is mostly flat, so it should not really be a problem...right? We chose one of the very many good gps routes from Bikely (yep, it's a pain of a website when it does not work, but very useful when it does!)

Alarm ringing at 7 am. Oh well, as we say back home "sarna con gusto no pica" meaning you chose to do this for fun so no excuses or complains accepted. Still, we managed to miss our fast train up to Cambridge and ended up getting on the slow one. We shared the ride with a fellow bike polo machaca on his way to playing this unique cycling discipline. East London and Brick lane seem like a good place to practise as shown on this video...they do have good control over their fixies!



Upon arrival to Cambridge, we headed straight away onto the roads leading East and past the airport, following Sustrans route 51 towards Bury St. Edmunds. The route becomes very quiet through country lanes after that. 50 km later we headed south of Bury and into Hartest, were we spent a few days last summer. Right outside Hartest we hit the steepest hill in Suffolk apparently! It was quite short, but such a killer. The route from here to Lavenham was amongst the best ones we have ever done in the UK.

Heading out of Lavenham we were pretty much half way, and I was starting to feel really tired. I knew this could be either lack of sleep or that I was about to bonk. We stopped and ate as much as I could before continuing, and luckily I managed until Cambridge. The last third of the route was very flat with smooth tarmac and little traffic. Our average of 22 km/h dropped a little, but eventually we were approaching our starting point with a respectable 21 km/h over 8 h of riding time, with 9.5 h of overall time since we left the station. The saddles, bib shorts, and our tight culitos had done a great job! The final odometer said 171 km (103 milles) from door to door, including getting lost in shouthern Cambridge...We were both very pleased to have achieved this distance for the very first time and are wondering whether we should think about Audaxing? 200 km is next in our calendar, perhaps even before Dunwich Dynamo in July? 300 km sometime soon?

my first century

On Sunday, 5 June, I rode my first 100 miler! It was actually more like 106 miles including getting to and from the train station in London. This was my goal for the whole summer so I am excited to have completed it so early on. I'm not sure what caused me to ask Alberto if we could plan a century ride for this weekend, but I felt ready for the challenge, as long as the route was relatively flat!

We got a late start (as always) and missed the first train to Cambridge, so we only got started on our route at 9:30am. I was feeling quite good at the beginning of the ride, and as we got out of Cambridge and into the countryside I felt like we were flying along at a much faster pace than normal. It helped that Alberto was leading and I was finally figuring out how to stick to his back wheel. We had talked about the fact that we would need an okay pace in order to finish the ride at a reasonable time, and I think I spent much of the early part of the day focusing on keeping my speed up... glancing at my speedometer marveling at its high numbers, chasing Alberto's back wheel, and enjoying the smooth road surface, good visibility, and wide roads of East Anglia which allowed me to gain good speed on the downhills without worrying too much. We were averaging 22 kph (14 mph) at this point, whereas for instance on our way to Brighton we only averaged 17 (11 mph).

The thatched cottages and cathedrals in the villages of Suffolk were really pleasant. An early highlight of the day was cycling through Hartest, a village near Bury St Edmunds where some friends of my parents have a house. We were cycling along and suddenly passed their house, which we had visited last year! They weren't in, but we snapped a picture to show them later and continued on our way, past Lavenham which we were also familiar with from our trip to Bury last summer.

The terrain got a little bit hillier after that, which may have been the beginning of my struggles. I remember feeling that I couldn't quite keep up the pace we had set earlier on. A little while later, we stopped because Alberto was feeling quite tired and wanted to make sure he ate a fair amount of food to avoid bonking. I think it was shortly after this that I started to feel quite rough and for a little while I needed to go quite slowly. We still had about 50 km to go at that point and I had surpassed my longest difference ever so far. My back and neck were sore, my butt was starting to get uncomfortable, and my hands were experiencing a numbing sensation every now and again. I just kept looking at the cycle computer and feeling bad that I wasn't going faster.

I never really doubted that I would finish, but I did doubt whether I'd be limping to the station or finishing strong. After a struggling for about 20 km, Alberto gave me a lecture about not obsessing about my speed all the time and just riding at a comfortable pace. We adopted a strategy of constant chit chat, which did help to take my mind off the ride and the next kilometers passed much more quickly. I was uncomfortable, but by the time we got on to the main road leading back into Cambridge my legs were feeling quite good again.

We always seem to get lost looking for Cambridge's train station and this time was no exception. We turned down a 'road' which turned out to be pretty much a parking lot, and as we were turning around to head back out I somehow managed to fall over! I tried to change direction too quickly while going quite slowly, and suddenly found myself losing balance. I didn't have time to unclip so I fell over instead! This is the first time I have properly fallen over as a result of the clipless pedals. It was only slightly physically painful, but quite a bit more demoralising, coming at the end of such a long ride. I just wanted to get to the train station and be able to say that the ride was complete! I picked myself up and got back on the bike, and soon after we found the train station and made it safely on board with some snacks for the return journey. I was wiped out but happy. It feels so good to rise to a challenge and accomplish a major goal.

My only problem now is that a century was my goal for the year. Now I need to set a new one!