Event Report: Ride London 100 2013

It's been all go for the last few weekends and this weekend was no exception; more excitingly it was the inaugural Ride London 100 event and the longest ride for me since crashing my bike last year on 2nd September, by 100%.

I've been training for 70.3 Austria in September this year and that has meant no rides longer than about 3.5 hours since I've got back on my bike early this year.  80km max, I think, though I'd have to look at some of the ones in Spain to be certain.  Ride London 100 is 100 miles... 160km.  So I was apprehensive to day the least.

Mr TOTKat and I agreed we'd take it gently, enjoy the day out and see how we felt.  So we planned the logistics of the days around it, I got stressy about it all and he figured it out sensibly.  I think I was  just so focused on fear of the distance, the second longest ride of my life to date after Ironman UK last year and that was not a lot of fun at all at the time.  But with it all figured out and no pressure on the day and days around it, we headed into the weekend relatively calm and prepared.

4am on Sunday and the alarm went off... having spent the night in a very humid, cheap hotel room nearing to the finish, we hadn't had a lot of sleep when we were dragged to consciousness by the familiar sound of ducks quacking.  Brekkie was posh instant porridge with California Raisins stirred in and a black coffee before we turned all the bike lights on and headed out to the road to ride to the Olympic Park for the start.

The route got thicker and thicker with riders until we reached the park to drop off bags, find people and filter into the pens for the start.  The plan never was to try to hang on to the rest of the Freespeed guys as they really are a lot faster than us and had different plans for the day than we did.  The start was announced and we rolled off out onto the course shortly after dawn onto the most fantastic course imaginable.  Like the London Triathlon weekend, London's closed roads were absolutely dreamy to ride on and I quickly got caught up in turning on some speed after the first few tens of km. And by the first hub, I was starting to think that perhaps I was going too hard.

We stopped at the first hub, situated in Hampton Court Palace, and had a nice cup of tea with some salty crunchy Sunbites having crunched through a Clif bar at the first toilet break.  We spent quite some time there and when we started off again I really did start to have some fun.

  

I latched onto the back of one of the passing pelotons and hung on for a while, dropping Mr TOTKat quite a bit.  I eventually came to my senses and dropped off the back of the group and waited for him to catch me up.  Then coming up into the second hub, which I thought was at the top of Leith Hill, I was preparing for a mean old hill that never came.  We stopped in the hub there for a very long time indeed.  Had tea and bacon rolls and chatted about quite a lot.  I think we were there for a good 40 minutes before deciding that we really ought to be getting on or we'd be out all day.

 

Then Leith Hill actually happened.  Mmm, that was fun.  I wouldn't mind giving it a go again when it's not covered in a bajillion other cyclists.  As it was, it was quite narrow and a bit tricky to get up as I really only have one climbing speed and if people are slower than that and in front of me taking up the width of the road, I have problems.  I did manage to find a route through with a chatty woman who helped keep my mind focused on getting up in one piece and not getting off to walk when I realised I was incredibly hot, really quite spectacularly hot indeed, so much so that my sunglasses steamed up even in the heat of the day.

With the one hill I was worried about over with, and Box Hill come and gone with a stop for a last tea and a shared treacle tart, there was one more loo break required at a small station before the third hub and some aid from the St John Ambulance chaps for my elbow which was getting very sore and not supporting me very well any more.  I iced it for 15 minutes at that aid station along with my wrist as well and we saw that there were reports of pretty awesome medals at the finish line, so we decided to get a move on and get to the end without any more mucking about.

Starting off at a reasonable pace and then winding it up more and more, I dropped Mr TOTKat pretty convincingly again - he was actually impressed and there was no latching on to big groups this time, just really really enjoying riding and swooping around roundabouts on the wrong side of the road; I had a whale of a time!  We swept through Kingston's one way system backwards and onwards on our normal route home from there, which was a lovely surprise and meant the little rise out over the A3 wasn't a surprise and then through Wimbledon, up the hill and all in our stride while many very tired people got off and walked.

Invigorated by that last part of the route and knowing there was less than 10km to go, it was time to enjoy the course back into town and then up The Mall to the finish line, arm in arm.

Ride London 100 was a fabulous experience. We absolutely loved it!  So well organised and smooth with no hitches or real stress on the day.  I think we failed to find the festival at the end in Green Park, but otherwise the atmosphere was truly lovely and at no point was anyone difficult, aggressive, short with other riders in any way and the St John Ambulance guys reported being pretty much bored all day; perfect!  We even saw Boris a few times 'cause we spent so long at the hubs :o)

Bring it on again in 2014!

Good week, great ride!

Sunday's long ride (with short run afterwards) was a bit on the scary side, thinking about it beforehand, what with all the snow that's going on and the ice warnings...

Still, I set off a bit later than planned but with a belly full of porridge and tea, with Percy Pigs, a cereal bar, my phone, an extra thermal top and a flask of hot tea in my rucksack,  a bottle of water on my bike, and a decent length route plumbed into the Garmin.

The route was a good idea. A really nice change from the usual tedious routes and a few hills in it for good measure.  In theory, looking at the profile and the description, there were 3 hills on the route.  One and two were un-named but number 3 was Box Hill.  Demonised and scare-mongered that hill is, but I decided to stop being a wuss and go for it anyway.

Having trundled in to Kingston and taken a left where we normally turn right to go to the Thames Turbo races, I ended up on a long, straight, quiet road by the side of the river for quite some time.  This is where I hit the only patch of black ice I've ever come across and in the first split second, I had no idea what was going on, almost lost the back end of the bike, felt a weird gyroscopic effect and the struggle of my feet trying to fly away from the pedals but being clasped firmly in place by my cleats.  Not fun. but I didn't go over and it was finished in less than a couple of seconds.

The route carried on into villages, past a church where, at the one hour mark, I stopped for a minute to cram in the first five Percy Pigs.  They are great.  Seriously.  Then came the first hill.  It was a bit hard, but nothing terrible, nothing more than Wimbledon Hill which isn't so bad really.  Then came the second hill, which was a bit harder than the first.  Really quite a bit and I was slogging very slowly in the lowest gear, getting a bit worried about falling off due to moving so slowly and the piled up snow at the sides of the road forcing me more into the middle of the road with there being a couple of blind dips for oncoming vehicles.  It got so steep at one point that I was properly worried that I might go over into the road with no way for a car to see me, so I got off and walked up a little bit, before getting back on at a shallower section and finishing the climb.  Having passed through a few places where there were National Trust car parks and other sites, I decided to stop at the next one as that'd be 2 hours in to the ride and I wanted to have some tea and a cereal bar and hopefully a wee stop.  I got the tea and the cereal bar, plus some more Percy Pigs, but I'm afraid I had to make some yellow snow as there were no loos.  Two hills down, one to go.

Having got up the first two hills, I was genuinely worried about what Box Hill had in store for me especially having had to walk up a section of one of them.  If these hills were not named or publicly feared, how was I going to get up the one people talk about?  The tens of metres passed on and on with no sign of another hill...

Then I came to the first road that was coned off and  marked as "CLOSED", I trundled through, thinking "naaah, they don't really mean that, it looks fine to me.  It was a gentle downhill to a hair-pin bend at which point I was faced with this:-

And a lady out for a walk in the snow with her walking stick.  We chatted for a bit about the state of the road.  I think she thought I was crazy.  We headed off on our separate ways and then the road got worse and became this:-

The difference is subtle, but enough that the bike was going sideways and over bumps and even after I'd got off to walk, I fell over while wheeling my bike along.

Thankfully it cleared quite quickly and I was back on the wheels again and off for a lot more km before I came to the dreaded, revered, much-famed Box Hill.  I took the turning to the bottom of Box Hill, found the right hand turn that starts the climb to find, yet again, "ROAD CLOSED" and, just for fun on a hill, speed bumps.

Box Hill.  What a let down!  I was expecting some monster of a steep hill that would put the burn into my thighs and lungs, but nothing of the sort.  It's a set of fairly pedestrian switchbacks at a civilised gradient and even with speed bumps added in, it's just a very long, very shallow climb.  Unfortunately for me on Sunday, the reason for the road closure became apparent as I neared the top it got icy like that last photo again.  This time I didn't get off and walk up the last little bit, I just cycled purposefully onwards.  Easy on the handlebars, not fighting the bike and not putting a whole lot of power into the pedals.  And I almost got to the top, before I skittered sideways over a particularly lumpy, rutted patch of ice and lost the back end, ending up lying on my side, pedals still clipped in due to the low speed with my bike flapping between my legs. Ohboy did I feel silly in that position.  As I was just getting back on again I was passed by someone on a (far more appropriate for the condition of that road) mountain bike who said "that was fun wasn't it?" to which, the only appropriate response was "not really, no".  I now have a mahousive bruise on my right hip.

At the top of Box Hill, there's a National Trust cafe thing with benches outside where I decided to have more tea and Percy Pigs.  My poor bike was a teensy bit snow-bound from the trip up the hill...

...but the tea was still hot and the last 5 Percy Pigs a bit sweaty and sticky from being in my back pocket so long.

With a bit of help from a friendly mountain biker from Wimbledon, the packed-in ice in my cleats was dug out with a stick so I could get back on my bike for the last stretch home.  To be honest I was a bit naughty and turned up the gas a bit much for the final stretch.  This was supposed to be an easy ride, and it was apart from the scary bit up the earlier hill where I had to get off and walk, but the call of the home stretch often proves a bit much for me to resist.

Last week was a good un' and the ride at the end was just great.  I loved it, despite falling over a couple of times. Again! Again!

I <3 my bike

Today's ride in wasn't particularly nice.  Though London was oddly beautiful in the strangely warm and dry mist this morning.  Like.. weird.  Misty.  But warm.  And I didn't feel damp at all.  Pretty.  But weird.  My legs had no power and I felt a bit weak in general.  No fun at all.  So I decided at the end of today's working day not to bother getting into my lycra and to just cycle home in my jeans and t-shirt and take it easy.

The first great thing was that CTUK were at the Northern side of Southwark bridge, helping out with tuning and training, so I stopped for a lovely chat and learned about brake and gear tuning.  I now have a set of gears that will let me use the big chain ring!  And my brakes are lovely and sharp with -much- less travel in the levers.  And I know how to adjust them myself for next time.  Result!  So that made me set off with a spring in my step, so to speak and I ended up having a fabulous ride home, spotting the best gaps and hazards weeeell in advance and didn't have to stop at all between Clapham South and the Savacentre!  The upshot was, the fastest ever ride home and a really really enjoyable one with no fuming, snarking, yelling or grumbling at all.  *beam*