On Easter Monday I rode from Ealing to Smithfield Market with rjs. We met purple_mj and cycled on to the London Phoenix Easter Classic start point out east at the Fairlop Waters Country Park. I was on my good bike since the forecast was supposed to be nice. It started to rain just before we arrived at the Park.
Met fatboyralph and Ant at the start and also Miles who caught the train over from Hillingdon. I met him on the Quest/Willesden/fast lot clubrun the day before where I did a soggy 130k. He was quite new to the fast lot too and is very keen to get involved in some racing. We all rolled out together and it took about 2 minutes for me to go from “I’ll just ride it easy at the start and see how I’m feeling later on” to “We HAVE to catch that bunch now! GO GO GO!!!!”. Miles and I left the others behind. Desi was with me for a while and I was almost going to shut it down and ride with him but I think the adrenalin had kicked in properly so I continued after Miles.
It was raining lightly for the first half of the ride and the roads were wet enough to cause me (and some others) grief. My bald tyres (on since L2P last year though the bike was unused for 6 months) meant I was sliding everywhere for most of the morning. It was VERY sketchy! I almost almost ate my front tyre when climbing out of the saddle and the back wheel spun around suddenly.. twice. At another point I almost lost it in front of a car when going in a straight line down hill.. I SLOWLY moved right to pass someone and the back end of the bike shot left and right like Bauge’s skid on the track during the Worlds 🙂
So with all this sliding around and wet sketchiness I spent most of the time sat 5-10m off the back of our bunch, moving up when the roads dried a bit and being very heavy handed with the brakes before all the corners, making sure my bike stayed upright. So much extra work for nothing.. damn it! I would have dropped my tyre pressure but didn’t want to lose the bunch.
At one point I shot off the front for a wizz (sure I could have told them what I was doing but it was more fun to see if they chased) and the bunch ended up getting 1k on me. Chased them for some time and managed to catch them up again and shortly afterwards moved onto someone’s wheel at the front. He was accelerating off the front of the bunch so I went with him (that adrenalin again!) and then he noticed me on his wheel and pushed hard.. eh? I thought “meh.. nice try pal” and left him in my wake riding off on my own (as I tend to do).
Then caught up with a London Phoenix rider who was supposed to be cleaning up after the last riders but had freed up space in the sag wagon for a rider who had crashed – he was using the crashed rider’s back wheel – some odd combo of Shimano and Campag that was giving him a bit of trouble. We rode together chatting a bit until near the end at which point Miles passed, having chased me down, originally not noticing I’d gone. With no big hills though I hand the upper hand on this course and passed him for the “win” 🙂
GOLD standard ride with a time just over 3.5hrs for the 114k.
190k all up for the day. ToI is looking good. 🙂
Thanks Ant, Desi, Rob, Martin, Miles, Daccordi and Stuart (who I met after the ride) for riding with us to/from the ride. Thanks to the Phoenix for putting on a good ride. Sub 3hr next year 😉
I might use this must-change-tyres moment to test some of those Schwalbe Ultremos.. or some faster Vittorias. Newsflash: I’ve bought some new Rubino Pros, some new Diamante Pro 20mm and some uber-bling Vittoria Evo Corsa KX tyres. I’m going to try the 20mm Diamantes on Sunday’s time trial.
London Phoenix Easter Classic Powertap:
Duration: 3:29:32 (3:30:30)
Work: 2655 kJ
TSS: 384 (intensity factor 1.05)
Norm Power: 273
VI: 1.29
Pw:HR: n/a
Pa:HR: n/a
Distance: 113.014 km
Min Max Avg
Power: 0 1108 212 watts
Cadence: 32 215 91 rpm
Speed: 3.7 55.8 32.5 kph
Pace 1:05 16:13 1:51 min/km
Hub Torque: 0 49.1 8.4 N-m
Crank Torque: 0 122.3 23.0 N-m
Thanks to you for the ride over there too — nice to meet you!
As mentioned on the forum, between adding another 8K onto the route, and cramping almost half of the way, my time was slow – hopefully fix that for the next Sportive I try.