Cycling to the Olympics

Tower bridge - Olympic style

Over the past few weeks, Olympic fever has truly gripped London, Alberto and I included. Cycling has  had an important role to play in this, especially because of Team GB's fantastic success both on the road and on the track. 

Last Sunday I went to Richmond Park to watch the women's road race, staking out roughly the same spot that we had at last year's London-Surrey Cycle Classic. Although it wasn't technically allowed, I managed to bring my bike with me on the Overground train so that I was able to cycle to Richmond from the station as I normally do. As I had hoped, it was slightly quieter on the side of the road than the men's race the day before, so I was able to get a good spot. It was still a fantastic atmosphere as we watched the peloton leave London to head into the Surrey Hills. There were plenty of cyclsts out to watch, and ready to take advantage of the closed roads as soon as the riders made it through. 

Awaiting the peloton in Richmond Park

I was all ready to relax in the park and pootle around until they came back through on their return to the finish, but almost as soon as the peloton had passed it started to rain steadily. I took shelter under some trees and waited for a while, but eventually decided to head home and catch the end of the race from the comfort of my living room! 

A few days later, Alberto and I had tickets to the women's basketball quarterfinals at the olympic park. We had heard a lot about the cycle parking infrastructure that had been put in place, and equally as much about the terrible queues to leave the Olympic park and get on the train back to central, so we decided to cycle there. 

We met up outside Alberto's work and headed to Regent's Canal which was pleasantly quiet at just before 5pm on a Tuesday. The Canal took us all the way to Victoria Park, where the cycle parking lot was located. We had heard that it was being under-utilised and definitely found that to be the case when we were there! The cycle parking is about a ten minute walk from the entrance to the olympic park and on our way there, we passed many bicycles parked to the railings closer to the entrance. Understandable that people wouldn't want to walk all that way, but we were glad that ours were safe and sound behind security. 

Cycle parking facilities in Victoria Park

After enjoying a walk around the park and some great women's basketball matches (Russia vs. Turkey and France vs. Czech Republic), we watched tens of thousands of people head towards the tube station while we took a different exit and headed back to our bikes, feeling very smug that we had beaten the queues! 

Outside the olympic stadium

The velodrome

It hasn't all been rosy -- London's critical mass ride coincided with the night of the opening ceremony and resulted in hundreds of arrests, and a cyclist was killed by an olympic bus near the park, underscoring the fact that while cycling may be increasing in popularity in London, the infrastructure is not being improved to match. 

Sill, it's been great being in the host city of the Olympics, even though we were initially skeptical that it would have a negative effect on our ability to cycle. Actually, the roads have been very quiet so if anything, cycling has been better than normal. If only we could convince all the cars to stay away from London permanently!

A quick off-road spin in Richmond Park

We've been hibernating for a few days in London. The snow has finally made its arrival, and temperatures have dropped below freezing, causing patches of ice on some roads.

On top of that, time is very limited for me due to work commitments. So a quick unplanned mtb ride it was. With Epping being supper muddy, and the North Downs being an unexplored territory for us, Richmond seemed like a sensible idea.

We head to Richmond when all the other plans don't work out. It is easy to get there, nice-ish, and full of other machacas to cheer you up. But this time we took the mtbs rather then the skinny tyres. And what a great decision! Just minutes after we entered the park, we saw a fellow rider badly falling over in a roundabout. His front wheel hit some ice and within milliseconds he was on the floor. Luckily the cars had seen him, so he was fine.

The park was packed with other roadies though. Mtb's were all over the place also, and so we decided to join the trail going anticlockwise. It is about 12 km long, flatter than the road, and with plenty of pedestrians. There is no complicated parts, except that this time there was slush in some sections. When I tried to go find the singletracks (yes, there are some!) I was soon told off by a local...Apparently, bikes destroy the paths, so cyclists are not allowed to go off the trail.

Paths that you're not supposed to cycle on...

Only minutes before we were told off, Lucy had her first and only fall in the park. It was a downhill-ish section, with wet and slippery surfaces. A great combination for some good fun I thought. But I forgot that she's still learning what not to do in those circumstances: pulling the front brake when turning while going downhill. I did not realise, but she fell. Fortunately, a fellow mtber was there and gave her some intructions: put your weight behind the saddle and do not pull the front brake! She made it down the rest of the hill safely. Oh well, we will try again next time?! She seems to have assimilated the rule number 5 because, to my surprise, she did not complain nor shout at me that much...!

Post-fall muddy effects

Apart from those exciting minutes of singletrack, the ride finished smoothly two laps later. At least we managed to put in some kms and spin the legs. We got sooo muddy, which in a way feels good. But not so much when we got home and found out that the hose was completely frozen, so no running water to get rid of the mud!

Lucy's got new freckles!

Cycling the Olympic road race route

We have enjoyed a very pleasant winter in London so far, with mild temperatures, sun, and very little rain. But the forecasts for Saturday predicted below 0 degrees, although sun throughout the day.

I had signed up to join a group that was cycling the route of the Olympic road race to be held in London as a part of the Olympic games this coming summer 2012. With the only difference that we would not be circling around Box Hill for nine consecutive times! It was going to be a ~130 km (80 miles) loop from Hyde Park Corner, in central London, out to the Surrey area and back. You can see it below.



I prepared for a cold day out on the bike. Thick winter bib tights, thermal shirt, short-sleeved jersey, windstopper top, 2x Buffs, neoprene overshoes, and...long winter gloves. Set the bike up for night riding assuming that we were likely to be returning after sunset. Filled the water bottles and got the saddle bag ready. Surpringly enough, I kind of forgot the prepping routine; it's been more than two months since we did our last proper long ride!

Alarm set off at 7 am. Well, Lucy poked me to tell that the alarm was off at 7 am. Porridge was cooked and I was off to Hyde Park corner by 8:05 am. Cars had a thick layer of frost near home, and I have not seen that for a while. I was very worried about encountering black ice, but we were lucky we did not hit any. It was the coldest day of the winter so far, no doubt.

Regents Park also had some frost, and we would find the same throughout the route. Shortly after 8:30 am we departed from Hyde Park Corner and headed for Putney and Richmond. The traffic lights slowed us down considerably, and took us almost 2h to get out into the countryside. However, the views were well worth the early wake up and cold temperatures. Fingers were not so happy though. Cold turned into a lot of pain, and the fingers got swollen. I could barely break or change gears and at some point the idea of bailing out did not seem that bad...but I applied rule number 5 - "harden the f*** up, Alberto" (see this hilarious website for further details). I definitely need better gloves and/or liners. Most of the other riders wore skiing gloves. Apart from that, I was feeling ok and quite toasty!

Richmond Park at 9am is covered by frost

At some point on our way to Woking, the group decided to stop at a cafe for a quick rest. I was so glad I could feel my fingers again. Thermometers showed -1 degrees C and my water bottles confirmed it with ice floating.

Unwanted ice cubes in January!

From then on, it was actually ok. We went down the A25, with a little climb towards Newlands Corner (where we started our first 200 km Audax, and where we will be in again in a couple weeks time for another 100 km pootle), down to Shere and soon arrived in Golsham. There's a nice pub there, with plenty of space to leave the bikes and the food was really nice (and that's not so often that I say that about pub food!). It's always comforting to chat about bikes and rides, and especially to realize that I am not the only one obsessed about it. One of the riders was not too shy to admit that we has more than 10 working bikes sitting in his kitchen!

The sun in the UK winter does not go much higher than this

From here, it was a short ride until we hit Box Hill. Although it is a very gentle and easy climb, I struggled a bit. It's amazing how quickly you lose fitness. Two months without a proper ride and it feels like starting from scratch again. My quads were killing me, and I was on the lowest cog pretty much all the way. Really need to do a lot of training for our Pyrinean crossing in May!

After we took in some nice vistas from the top of Box Hill, it was an easy downhill along quiet lanes of the Surrey Hills. Soon we were crossing the M25, which meant we were back in London. Traffic picked up as we approached Kingston. Richmond Park followed, and it was a pleasure to cycle with little traffic given that the Park closes its gates to cars by sunset. However, a gigantic traffic jam formed to exit it as they only left one of the gates open. I was so glad to be on a bike. After all, I would not like to be stuck in a park at 5 pm, on a Saturday, but apparently some folk do.

Passing Putney and then Chelsea was not too bad, despite the noisy Aston Martins/Ferraris/Mercedes that are so common there. Love looking at the "smart" (i.e. posh) people in their fancy vehicles and annoyed faces, while we were all so happy after having nearly completed the ride on the coldest day of the 2011/12 winter!

Back to Wellington Arch, it felt as if we were about to start a Friday Night Ride to the Coast: blinking lights, riders, and darkness. The first of those rides is in March and we cannot wait!

Back at Wellington Arch, Hyde Park Corner

Overall it was a pleasant ride, but not particularly recommend the route as the roads are busy and slow out of London. The bit in Surrey is quite nice though, but the roads need resurfacing before the summer event, which I believe they're doing after winter.

The stats were: 140 km (door to door), 22.2 km/h average (due to traffic lights in London), 6h 20 min riding time and 62 km/h maximum speed. I reckon the professional machacas doing the race in the summer will complete it in under 4 hours...

First Ride of 2012

On Saturday afternoon, we took the Overground out to Richmond Park for our first ride of 2012. It was actually our first 'real' (non-commuting) bike ride in about seven weeks, due to all the craziness of Thailand and Christmas, so we didn't have high expectations for performance!

It was a relatively sunny day, and mild for this time of year (the high was 10 degrees C, or 50 F), and the park was absolutely full of cyclists! Everyone must have resolved to cycle more in 2012. Unfortunately, it was rather full of cars as well, so it wasn't the most relaxing of rides.

The first lap around the park went surprisingly well for me,  I struggled up the one major hill, but it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. The second time around was more challenging--my legs didn't seem to want to put very much effort in!

Starting to struggle up the hills!

The last segment of each lap is a long, gradual uphill with a steeper kick at the very end. This is always disheartening as you watch your speed decrease. So by the end of the second lap I really didn't feel like going through it all over again. The sun was also starting to dip below the trees so the temperature was dropping. Alberto still wanted to get another lap in, so we reached a compromise -- I cycled the 3 minutes back to the train station and had a nice hot tea while he did a final lap and then came to meet me. I ended up with around 30km for the day, and Alberto more like 40. Our average speed was all right at 23kph (14.3mph), but it's clear that my endurance has suffered over the winter!

This was a nice chance to test some of my new cycling gear -- the Pearl Izumi tights I bought worked well. My bum is a little sore today, but I can hardly blame that on the tights after not having been on the bike in ages. It didn't rain, but my waterproof jacket proved to be the right level of warmth for the day, worn with a short sleeved jersey and arm warmers that I pulled down almost as soon as we climbed our first hill. We also wore our new matching jerseys, Christmas gifts from Alberto's parents, which are from the cycling club in Benasque (Spanish Pyrenees), where Alberto's family holidays. Unfortunately this meant that I was wearing three different shades of pink/purple on my upper body (my new Buff being the third) but hey, what can you do.

Showing off our Benasque jerseys on the train home

It will be hard to get longer rides in over the next few weeks, since we only have eight hours of daylight at the moment, but we're looking forward to a 100km Audax on Jan 29th to really whip us into shape!

Sun starting to set as Alberto heads back to the station, 3:00pm.

2011's Magic Moments on a Bike

2011 was a great year for me in relation to cycling. It was only my second year of cycling and there were so many new and wonderful experiences. I thought it would be nice to pick out my five favorite moments of cycling this year. Here they are, in chronological order...

#1: Big hills in the Peak District
We went to the Peak District for four days over 'Royal Wedding Weekend' in April and had a fantastic time. We had sunny skies, well-paved roads, and beautiful views. On our first day (only a half-day of cycling) we cycled from Derby to Matlock over some massive hills. And I made it up all of them! I was still getting used to the new road bike, which was so much lighter than my hybrid. I have walked up a fair few hills since then, but making the whole ride without walking was a big rush.

#2: Dawn on the way to Dunwich
The entire Dunwich Dynamo (in July) was magic, but during the second half of the ride, dawn began to break at around 4:00am as we cycled eastwards towards the sea. The ride had spread out after the halfway stop, so we were on our own, cycling through deserted roads. It wasn't quite light yet, but we could start to get a better sense of our surroundings with the sunlight coming over the horizon. It really felt special.

#3: Watching the deer in Richmond Park
In August, we went to Richmond Park to watch the London-Surrey Cycle Classic. Afterwards we cycled around the park and stopped to read in the grass in a quiet area. Soon after, an entire herd of deer came walking right past us, crossed the road, and disappeared into the woods on the other side. It was a really special moment, as the deer emerged one by one out of the woods, looked both ways before crossing the road (I swear!), and then walked on. We would never have seen that if we hadn't cycled.

#4: The last 500 meters up the hill to Newlands Corner Carpark
I had my highs and lows on our 200km audax in October, but one moment I will never forget is the last 500 meters before the finish. We were cycling up a hill so the meters were passing slowly, and Alberto was watching the route on his GPS. He kept shouting out how long we had left to encourage me to keep pedaling. We rolled into the carpark with 30 minutes to spare, and became randonneurs!

#5: That one minute in Epping Forest...
...where I actually felt like I knew what I was doing on my mountain bike! I've only had a few chances to take the mountain bike out so far, and have spent most of the time either terrified, walking my bike over tough sections, or falling off. But there was one moment at the end of our first time out to Epping Forest in October when I, just for a second, got it. I was cycling along the path smoothly, "letting the bike do the work," and I glimpsed what all the fuss is about with mountain biking.

Well, there you have my top five cycling moments of 2011. Roll on 2012!

Watching a pro-cycling race

Last weekend, we decided to check out the London-Surrey Cycle Classic, yet another event of the London Prepares series. The race took the route of next year's Olympic road race, except the peloton only did two laps of Box Hill, rather than the nine that the men will do next year.

The Olympic route starts and finishes on the Mall in front of Buckingham Palace, and goes through Richmond Park (fast becoming a favourite) both on exit and entry from London, then does a loop through Surrey. We thought we'd go watch the race from there since we know it well and we predicted there would be a good atmosphere of machacas there.

We caught the train to Richmond in time to watch the peloton come through on their return to the mall; the riders would have about 20km left in the race at that point. A fellow spectator told us that he had watched the riders leave west London earlier in the morning and there had been a breakaway of four riders, about a minute ahead of the peloton, so we were excited to find out how the race would look at this point so close to the finish line.

We knew the riders were nearby when a series of cars and motorbikes came flying past. First was a race radio car with loudspeakers on top. As it went by, it broadcast the current status of the race, so we heard that there were still two men in the breakaway and they were about 20 seconds ahead. Then several police motorbikes came past, from all across the UK, followed by the cars of the race officials and other important figures.

Finally, we saw two riders coming around the curve in front of us. We cheered them on and waited for the peloton which were knew were right behind them (they had even cleared the race vehicles from between them, a sure sign that  the peloton were going to catch up any minute now. The peloton flew by, team GB at the front, and it was all over in a few seconds.

The breakaway

The peloton

Many people in the crowd started crossing the road and leaving, while the race marshals (who are also practicing for next year!) tried to remind us that we hadn't seen the sweep vehicle come past yet. People were milling about, standing in the road, wandering off, when all of a sudden a second group of riders came into view in the distance! The marshals started frantically trying to get everyone out of the road, just in time for the second peloton, almost as big as the first, to come past. We were left wondering what could have possibly happened to split the peloton like that. Was there a crash that held people back, or maybe its just that there were two types of pro-riders on this race, the world class ones like Mark Cavendish and Tyler Farrar, and the middling racers who ride for smaller trade teams.

Surprise! Peloton number 2!

After the excitement of the second peloton, we waited around and watched a few more small groups of riders come around the bend. There was a long gap where no one came past... except for some normal Richmond Park machacas who had somehow managed to get on the road without being stopped by a marshall--the crowd was cheering them on unwittingly! During all this time, the marshals didn't have any more information than the spectators, except they knew that the sweep vehicle had not come past yet. Finally, a marshal somehow heard that there were two riders at the back, who had been involved in a crash. We waited for this last rider, gave him as much encouragement as we could muster, and watched the sweep vehicle come past.

It was more excitement than we had planned for and a lot of fun to watch the pros in action. Although I do hope they sort out the communication with the marshals for the next time around!

WnrItp (Weekday night ride In the park)

What a great way to finish off a regular Tuesday. Bring the bike into work, put lycra on, carry jeans and underwear in the backpack. Take the overground and 40 min later you are in one of the most beautiful places in London: Richmond Park.

One of the main downs is that it gets very busy with cars fighting for space against the hundreds of roadie machacas that hit its roads every day. But, at 8 pm the doors shut for cars, and remain open for the rest of the unmotorised population.

Light beam, blinking red lights, sunset, and trees on both sides of the road. Long exposure moving picture

So, shortly after 8 pm you hardly see any car, only the few that were not aware of the restrictions and are trying to get out. The deer seem to relax and we saw literally hundreds of them, of all sizes. By 8:45 pm it was so dark that we had to use our proper night lights to see a few meters ahead of us. Despite the delayed start due to a mechanical on Bec´s Trek, we managed to put in two laps of the finest riding in London, making some 28 km at an average of 22 km/h.

This park has it all: fast descents, a couple of proper-ish hills, flat bits, abrupt turns, and a fantastic sunset (or sunrise, if you are brave enough!). We were obviously not the only ones experiencing this, as it seems that lots of people enjoy the quietness of the park after 8 pm. We spotted hikers, night mtb-ers, night roadies and even a girl on a unicycle!

Definetely have to try and make this a regular weekday out throughout the year.

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?!