Whatever you want to call it, I have paid the ?100 entry deposit and plan to ride from London to Paris in late June 2008.

Now, embarrassment is one way to kick-start a training regime, not one I’d recommend but, err, too late, let the training commence!

Roller races lasting 20-30 seconds are one thing but what about riding 600k over 3 days complete with rolling road-blocks, leader’s jerseys and a tonne of fit buggers to ‘race’?

This certainly isn’t a cycle tour and the more I read the website the more I’m forced to think about some serious hard riding. I guess this will give me something to write about 🙂

Read more about the Londres-Paris here:

londres-paris.com website

roadcyclinguk.com – l2p 2007 ride report by richard hallett

“Interesting” ride today with one unfortunate soul going home in an ambulance with a broken clavicle and rib.

Fixed Tip #123and4: Don’t ride to Brighton on a bike built Thursday, your first fixed ride, without brakes, on tubs with 50×14 gearing! I’m just glad the injuries weren’t more serious.

The rest of the ride was pretty cool, definitely harder work fixed than on the road bike. We stopped at 11am for a minute’s silence. I made it up Ditchling Beacon without dabbing, 72″ fixed. Someone said we had SEVEN p_nct_res by the end of the ride! BMMF and I set off the speed cameras spinning into Brighton at over 48kph/30mph. Impressive as BMMF was running 67″ gearing and I was on 72″.

flickwg’s “nuts to rapha” spoke card designed for the ride

flickwg’s pics

MA3K’s pics

Roberto’s pics

Object17’s pics

Stats:

124k (42-16T, 72″ fixed) Total

90k Hyde Park Corner to Brighton

7 hrs 20 min Total Time

4 hrs 1 min Riding Time

57.9kph Max Speed

22.4kph Avg Speed

184rpm Max Cadence

Friday night Harvey said there was no rain forecast for Saturday and the wind was blowing from the South.

“Maybe I should do it” I thought. Finally made it home that night and fumbled around with google maps trying to cut out some A roads from the Ealing to Nottingham journey. I prepped the Soma for the ride after speaking to Mal about coming up for the weekend. She was keen so it was go!

Mal suggested I take the Ribble road bike rather than the Soma. I’m not sure why but I think she doubted I’d make it if I rode fixed – maybe she was paying attention to my detailed report of the evil that was Dunwich on the fixed Soma and the associated pain? Got to bed around 1am after getting bored writing out map directions.

5.30am and I was up. Toast and coffee while packing and kitting up. Bag with warmers and windvest options, some food and tools. The usual. I re-jigged the map again to drop some more of the ‘A’ roads and swap them for ‘B’ roads. Out the door around 7am.

The last minute re-jigging of maps messed up my written directions so within 20 minutes I was lost! One hour later, after going past the White Hart round-a-bout three times, I was finally in Harrow.. all of 7k away! Fsck.. great start.. no wonder I never do rides that rely on my own navigation! :S

Around 10am I was hungry and I still hadn’t woken up – I was literally dozing off on the bike! Pulled into a service station and bought a chicken salad sandwich an iced coffee and a chocolate bar to throw in the bag. A short while later I punctured somewhere around Hemel Hempstead.

Stopped on the A4146 at Pedley Hill near Dagnall for a photo of the lovely fields. Phone cam, no justice, etc.

I was using A roads quite a bit but these were mostly quiet (helps clearing London early). I jumped onto B roads when I noticed them heading in the right direction on the map.

Not having a lock with me meant I was forced to have lunch at a chippie (no, really, my arm was twisted!) so I could watch the bike. This was around 2pm, after Kettering in a town called Market Harborough. Chips and a chicken & mushroom pie. Well needed!

There were some interesting buildings here..

On from here it was getting a hillier. I’d be crawl up at 10kph and fly down at 70kph. Good fun. I’d also stopped reading from google turn sheet and was just picking appropriate A or B roads that headed in the right direction. I’m totally in the market for a good cycling GPS! Through Melton Mowbray I didn’t see any pork pies.

Coming in to Nottingham it was raining and the traffic was a lot heavier than for most of the ride. I was really moving rapidly as Mal was close to arriving at the Igloo hostel. In town, after a stack of directions and wrong turns I finally made it to the hostel (certainly not the Hilton but very nice staff and cool vibe here, btw!) after 11.5 hours, 8.5 hours riding and 230k on the clock! The biggest solo ride I’ve ever done. The staff and some of the residents at the hostel were very impressed (and so was Mal). I cleaned up and we went out for some exploration.

Nottingham was partying hard tonight – I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many short-skirted, boob-tubed drunk women going mental in one place. It’s true what they say about Nottingham having all of England’s hot girls. Perve factor was very high. Mal was annoyed she didn’t bring prettier clothes 🙂 I was happy we were both warm. We couldn’t get into the one place mentioned in Lonely Planet so we ended up having a huge feed in Pizza Express. It was pretty nice. The tiramisu was huge!

Sunday I was trashed. We left the hostel early to find coffee but it was after we found everything closed we remembered that daylight savings ended the night before. Some more wandering around – the city was very different without the semi-clad lasses everywhere.

We spent the rest of the day doing some touristy stuff and trying to take photos for Sharon.

As an ex-competitive archer, I had to visit the Robin Hood statue!

We explored the castle grounds and the museum..

Lunch was in Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalum, one of the contenders for the oldest pub in England..

Into the caves located under the Broadmarsh Shopping Centre!!

Click here for all our London to Nottingham Cycle Pictures

Here’s the Google Maps – London Nottingham route though it’s not really the one I followed.

The classic Catford CC Hillclimb (held on Yorks Hill near Sevenoaks Kent, Sunday 21st October 2007) is the oldest cycle race in the world. It was first run on the then unmade road of Westerham Hill on August 20th 1887 and won by S.F.Edge of the Anerley B.C. (later to join the Catford), riding a newfangled chain driven ?safety bicycle?. Yorks Hill averages 12.5% but has two killer stretches of 1 in 4.

A small bunch of lfgss riders headed from Borough Tube down to this race where one of our own, “BMMF” was racing. brett and myself were being soft and riding geared road bikes, brett as he’d just built his and me because I’ve not ridden it for two months and it was starting to collect dust. Also with us riding fixed was Stompy, Lucky7, fatboyralph and jonny. Did I forget someone? Probably. It was great! Weather was nice and the hills were steep. Poor buggers on fixed had to put up with me getting all excited about riding up and down hills again.. hit 80kph down Westerham Hill after slogging up a rather steep incline towards Biggin Hill Airport (me ‘orse!). The ride out from Ealing to Borough and Kents Hill was 62k and took us 2:50 with a few stops to check brett’s faultless directions, catch breath, drop roadies, etc.

At the ride spotted more lfgss dudes: Roberto, wayne_f14, Bring Me My Fix (who raced and was the fastest fixed of the day), Mouse, winston. Again names slipping from memory’s grasp. Talked a lot of bike guff and watched some poor riders suffering up the hill. We were about 30m from the top and watched some riders limp to the finish, while others didn’t seem to be struggling at all and practically flew up. The crowd was great, lining the road, shouting support at the riders or things like “put it up a gear!!!” 🙂

Image: wayne_f14’s pic of BMMF climbing Yorks Hill

The ride home was a bit of a slog but good fun with gears (ooh sacrilege!) as I could finally use the big ring and get some real pace on. On the way back called into the Rapha sale/Rapha photo exhibition at Host Gallery on Old St. I bought a pair of their Fixed shorts for ?30. Cheaper than a pair of Endura 3/4s so I figured what the hell?! Arrived home knackered but happy as fsck! I like riding.

Image: My HRM graph for the ride out to Yorks Hill

lfgss catford hillclimb thread with pics, etc.

my crappy phone-cam pics

Well, that was carnage. Respect to anyone who started the Dunwich Dynamo this year. More again for those who finished.

It was the most horrible ride I’ve had for a long while. It was my own fault for mucking around so much with my bike a week before the ride. I didn’t follow my own advice and suffered for it. Basically the bike I’d ridden was 42×18 singlespeed up until a week before the DD when I received some track cogs from On-One. I fitted the 15T thinking I could use it with the tail-wind and the 16T was a backup if there was a headwind. The 75″ gear felt wrong compared to the usual 44×17 (69″) I run but I stuck with it. I fitted a new saddle – a Selle Italia SLR to match my road bike which I’m quite comfy on. Using a seat-post from JimmyP (this worked – thanks!) I set about fscking everything up in an attempt to match the road bike’s measurements. Mistake.

Met Ed at Ealing Common and rode in to Bethnal Green to meet up with some of the LFGSS bunch. Introductions were made, Stompy gave me a zip-tie to hold my broken headset together and then we rolled over to the Pub on the Park in London Fields to the start area. There were loads of bikes around but it started to spit with rain and the forecast was dodgy so I think lots of riders bailed at this point (I overheard someone at the finish saying numbers were half what was expected).

Collected my return bus ticket and handed over a ?1 for a route sheet. We rolled out around 20.30. There was a small amount of confusion about where to go and our bunch of fixed freaks split up quickly. The rain grew heavier as the sky darkened. My speedo wasn’t working as the magnet didn’t grip the spoke properly – that put an end to any distance measuring I’d planned. Rode with Tommy for a bit and then lost everyone so just tacked onto groups here and there. It became obvious this was not going to be painless. I was grinding up the bumps and constantly shifting around trying to get comfortable. Every so often I’d have to get off the bike, stretch and try to crack my back for some pain relief. Not how I was supposed to be feeling. All I could think about was stopping and I was cursing the fixed wheel choice – there was no chance to just coast down the hills and stretch out as you would on a road bike.

At one point some guys I was drafting stopped. One of them had a GPS unit on his aero bars so I stopped with them and asked him the distance we’d done and how far to the rest stop. I was frickin’ desperate to stop and somewhat hungry. “10mi to go” he said as random riders went past on a different road (wtf?). I handed over some Bassetts for the info and continued on to the rest stop.

MA3K, JonnyWilkinson and an Alex were already there. I headed over and grabbed some soup and bread, a couple of bananas and a coffee. For the next maybe 2 hours? I sat there refilling coffees and eating.. happy to be out of the rain and off the bike but dreading the return to riding. Tommy, brett, Scott not Scot, slaam, Stompy arrived over time while we all sat around noting how riders were arriving wetter than the ones before.. not good.

Eventually we got going and walked out into the f-f-freezing cold night. It was ridiculously cold! Literally teeth-chatteringly cold. I had to warm up so headed off quickly. Matt (LFGSS brett’s mate) had the same idea. There was a tricky turn and we stopped to ponder over directions. When we rolled off Matt and I held steady pace and the rest were nowhere to be seen. It didn’t bother us – keeping warm was more important. Then we split up. At some point I noticed a car tipped over into a ditch. It was also starting to get lighter. A bunch of people had stopped for direction checking and I stopped with them and decided enough was enough – I moved my saddle forward 1cm. It was great after that! If it wasn’t for a couple of roadies waiting by a small lane I would’ve ridden straight past the turn. 50m after this little turn I found Matt. “How did you get behind me??” he puzzled. “I stopped” I grinned back.

Off we went again, leaving the group he’d stopped with behind. At a large round-a-bout I was sure we should turn left, but it was dual carriage way so instead I just rode right around the round-a-bout! Back at the turn.. there were now 50 riders!!! Included in the bunch were all the lads we’d left earlier – Tommy, JonnyWilkinson, brett, um.. yeah memory fading..

Off we went. I’m not sure if it was the stop and food, the light, the fact the rain had stopped, the saddle adjustment or the company but I was feeling tonnes better! Now I could ride up hills and chase people down and ride off to have a leak and all the stuff I’d do on a normal bunch ride. Saved! I’m not sure how much of this we ended up doing but I know that at the “Dunwich 7mi” sign it was myself and JonnyWilkinson and two of his mates(?). We were almost there and the signs teased us as we approached the coast with Dunwich This and Dunwich That before we finally saw a pile of bikes outside the Flora cafe!

DONE THE DUN!

There was actual sun out now although it still took hours to dry out. I made short work of a fry-up, some jam’n’cream scones and a cappucino. The bike was covered in crap splashed up from the road. (It would stay like that for another week). We arrived around 8am? So, a bit under 12hrs with perhaps 2hrs spent at the food hall. Lots of chatter ensued as more familiar faces arrived, stories of the horrors were told, ciders and beers and more coffees were put away. Mention of doing next was not dismissed.. then it was accepted.. then positively “can’t wait!”.. nutters the lot of us!

Sleep came easily on the 3hr bus ride back to the city. Then there was a 30min(?) wait for the bikes to show up. Time for more coffee and a Snickers. When the trucks arrived with the bikes I took mine, said some quick goodbyes, said ‘thanks’ when I spotted the guy from Condor who’d fixed my cranks (I couldn’t find a 7mm allen key anywhere!!), then rode home through town quite rapidly, filled with a large sense of achievement! I looked like a total zombie when I arrived, with dark, evil bags under my eyes but I was grinning.

Now planning a 300k/200mi ride.. somewhere.

LFGSS Thread – Dunwich FAQs – Dunwich Route – Dunwich Pics – Ed’s RR

Ed’s said more about this ride than I could here: http://omcoc.blogspot.com/2007/07/pre-dynamo.html

I will add that I’m doing this for the first time (finally), doing it on the Soma fixed (42 x 15) with a bunch of other fixed gear freaks from londonfgss.com.

Wish me luck.

Weather was nice for a change so there was a big bunch rolling out. We had some ‘larger’ fellows with us and the bunch was dawdling. Someone wanted to see the end of a 50mi TT and the bunch was directed onto some main road and lots of raised eyebrows and shrugging shoulders resulted. “What are we doing?” “I dunno”.

We rolled on, Steve’s front wheel siezing up and fixing itself and then cheered a few Willesden riders coming in to the TT finish line, including Ed.

Eventually we got moving properly, but still on this main road, pissing off a few drivers in the process. I don’t get it, it’s Sunday.. what’s the rush? Shouldn’t you be slower than us anyway. Impatient c0cks.

New guy manages to run one of the old guys off the road when he punctures on a steep descent. Not sure why there was turning required. This was explained to him..

Cafe at Wendover is expensive and as a result I had only a tiny coffee (My arse is large, this was not a LARGE coffee) and a cake. This didn’t help later..

We rolled out and CSC guy starts attacking the bunch. eh? Fsck it.. I’m keen now and don’t wait on climbs any more so I chase him down. Off he goes again so I chase and pass and end up half a kay up the road. Bunch catches up and.. off he goes again.. so do I.. now we are joined by Steve and the older guy who was run into the dirt and Suzz. We are not rolling turns, through and off and yet there’s still break aways! It’s mental.. the bunch is waay behind now and we are ripping along around 40kph and still guys will break up hills, etc.

I’m loving it.. about time we got some pace. Club runs are so not the training rides we had back in Melbourne! We made it back to Denham (rather quickly!) and split. 5k to go I was bonking something chronic! Going hot and cold, dizzy, blasting through gaps 🙂 Make it home alive and scoff some sugar.. all better. Sweet! Really need to try the Quest bunch rides..

The Bridges III – Saturday 21st July

The Bridges – Route

Although there was a list of 10 or so riders it was only DavidK and myself that rode all the bridges from Tower Bridge out west to Kew Bridge. It was a good laugh zipping through the suburbs at 9-11pm Saturday night. We’d made a couple of bridges before it pissed down with rain but we’d dried off by the end so it wasn’t too bad.

Visited a few places I’d heard of but never been to in the SW. We stopped once for drinks and did the lot in around 1.25hrs, I think? The bigger bunch took around 3hrs. I think we missed Hammersmith Bridge but we did Kew Bridge twice to make up for it. Left DK at his place and rode home. A much healthier and less stressful night than the alternative 🙂

I left early to work from home the other day. Saw Buffalo ‘where’s my razor’ Bill on Grays Inn Rd. Lalala happy riding..

Riding out of Shepherds Bush Green on the Soma, the day after I’d swapped the ITM full-carbon forks for aluminium-steerer Quest carbon forks.. when..

Some stupid fscking idiot rides his frickin’ bike through a gap in the moving traffic, alongside which I’m riding. Bang! Flashes of over-the-bars collarbone breakage. Smash into the sh1thead’s back wheel. Luckily I was already on the hoods and being careful due to driver’s tendencies to tighten up and squash cyclists into the gutter on that corner. Still, no real braking achieved before impact.

I flip out. This idiot complains about my language! (He must be English.) Now he wants to start something! He quickly gives up returning the grief when I must look and sound just as keen to kick it off.. I’m checking over my bike and realise it’s okay. He says something about my bike being fine and his being fscked. I look at his bike – his back wheel is totally fscked. It looks like a taco. I’m almost happy at this point so I don’t end up kicking his face off. No need to call the police.

Anyway, I’m over it now and actually help him – taking pleasure disconnecting his rear brake and kicking sh1t out of his wheel to bend it back into a rough line. I leave, happy, given the circumstances, until I get home and at the door notice my Selcof headset has a split down the side.. FSCK!

I’m going to ride it until it fails totally (which hopefully wont be during the 200k Dunwich Dynamo).

Speaking of failures, I was planning on swapping the Soma’s stem for the 100mm Bontrager XXXLite off the Ribble, but noticed hairline cracks around the bolt holes! Handlebars falling off at at 60kph.. err.. no thanks!

Nice ride today. Just beat the thunderstorm home. 120k to Stokenchurch via the Chilterns (some hills). The scenery was awesome – it’s so green out (weeks of rain has advantages) and we took roads that were placed on the side of hills and open to look over the small valleys.

The club runs aren’t competitive at all (they don’t even have a regular sprint point the cretins!) but the last couple have seen Steve and myself have little digs up some of the hills. Good fun but I really think I should give the faster Quest bunches a try. They might burn me a leave me in the middle of nowhere but I’m looking for a faster ride. It’d be a pity to leave behind the friendly club run crew though. I’ve been told the fast bunch does about 50mi on Sat and a 60-70mi ride on Sunday. I could do the Sat fast bunch and Sunday club run.. and poor Mal becomes the true “cycling widow” as me Mum put it. 🙂