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. 🙂

Mal’s Spyshot: Me hard at work marshalling the prologue..

The day started off boring as we arrived at 8am and then did nothing for a couple of hours. We were also off the race route which sucked but then all the team buses rocked up in our area and the riders started warming up.

It quickly turned to carnage. We were just volunteers and were not supposed to be crowd control or blocking traffic, etc. but a bunch of us ended up standing in the middle of the road: checking a multitude of passes and wrist bands to allow people into the “pits” (none of which we knew the meaning of – anyone with any pass got in), stopping dopey pedestrians from being run over by team cars and riders.

Meanwhile a bunch of coppers just stood around and watched us! One of them even had the nerve to say “do you know you just let a known felon through?”

Well actually if they are a known felon shouldn’t YOU fecking do something about them?!?! Secondly, they came from the OTHER end of this area, ie. from behind me, aka not my problem coppah!

Like I said, it was carnage. Did this for hours and then had to eat before I decked the next member of public trying to sneak in. I bailed and spent the last hour of the race watching the race! I didn’t feel guilty because I’d already heard that most of the marshalls were just standing on the route taking photos! I didn’t have a camera because they said we weren’t to take photos but I got Mal’s and snapped some during the last hour. See below. It was all good fun and wearing the jersey got us pretty much anywhere. We had a look into all the team areas, we got a clear space on the race route. Nice!

Mal & Hippy’s pics

mmuk’s photos – london prologue

weightweenies.starbike.com – CSC

addiscombe.org

A major, unique event in the cyclosportive season, following the route of stage 1 of the Tour de France on its historic UK Grand Depart, the event will take up to 5000 riders on an epic 192k (120mi) journey from beautiful and historic Greenwich out of London and through the Kent countryside to finish in Canterbury, in the shadow of the city?s ancient cathedral. A must-do, once-in-a-lifetime chance for any serious cyclosportive rider to blaze the trail of Le Tour itself.

British Cyclosportive website

With that spiel in mind, I entered. Last minute, mind. Wouldn’t want to appear interested. Not my style at all.

Sat 13:00

Registered at Greenwich Park in the pissing rain. Should be fun – “severe weather warnings have been issued for London and South East”.. grand, just grand!

Sat 20:24

Finished cleaning bike from last weeks drenching. Cleaned and lubed chain. Fitted brand new Blackburn Airstick to frame. Filled saddle pack with 2 tubes, puncture kit and keys. I’m actually very nervous about this as I really don’t know what to expect. But I rarely clean the bike so now that I’ve done it I HAVE to ride!

Sat 20:30

Continue panic. 192k (120mi) for the ride proper and I still have to get to the start 30k away from home. Decided to take the 06:26 train as far as Paddington and try to ride the remaining 10k to Greenwich without getting lost. Oh crap! :S

Sunday:

Woke at 5am and prepped more stuff, dressed in my new ?75 Assos knicks (the most expensive knicks I’ve ever bought) and even tried coating my undercarriage with Assos chamois cream! It was an odd sensation riding to the station with chilled inner arse cheeks! In the end (ha!) the gear worked a treat and it was my lower back and knee tendon thingies that pained me rather than my butt.

Two other guys were at the station. I showed them how to fit the timing chip to the front skewer and then we trained to Paddington. They had somewhat more of an idea how to get to Greenwich so I followed them. On arrival I unloaded the necessities from my Crumpler into my jersey pockets and left the rest in a black sack for the trucks to carry to Canterbury. Change of clothes for the bus ride home, that kind of thing.

Had a piss and rolled over to the start line right on 07:45, my alotted time. A guy fell over behind me before we even got the countdown to start! They were starting 40 riders every minute from 6am.

I came in at 7:03. That’s not too shabby for a ride way over my normal distances, solo except for two solid 15min bouts of bunch riding and stopping at every food station to maintain my ‘fatness’ (and I still lost ~6kg!!).

My average speed was 28.4kph so ride time was around 6.30-6.40 which was pretty bloody good for a lardy sprinter type like me.

As someone else made a comment about, I took a rain jacket and then didn’t put it on for the whole ride. It did rain and people were faffing about with clothing by the roadside but the showers only lasted 5 minutes at most, so not worth stopping for.

With riding from Greenwich to Ealing I ended up with 237.5k for the day which is the most I’ve ever done in a single day. Was a good ride.

I saw one fixed rider (there were more) and was glad I was geared. I was riding pretty hard and was cramping like a mofo up the hills. Ow!

Another report