More like Southend-THROUGH-Sea!

In true bank holiday fashion, it’s pissed down all weekend. Noah is out looking for wood as I type. I managed to get a few dry laps of Richmond Park in on Saturday before getting soggy and doing some damage to my back. I finally fitted the 135g Selle Italia SLR saddle that’s been in the cupboard for 18 months and I’m guessing the position change and too much effort up the hills messed up the old spine.

Sunday was feckin’ nasty weather and I was having serious doubts about riding. But, I’d also been hoping to ride this for a long time and finally stubborness won out over common sense (doesn’t it always!). I was hoping no one else would show at Covent Garden Seven Dials but 7 other brave lads did and, given we were already soaked, the ride was on!

Mario led us out of the city, well a mile away before we had our first puncture. While fixing this a woman tail-end another car at an intersection. Top start!

We decided not to do the 70mi route and opted for the shorter, more direct one along the A13.

This was like a wet Maroondah Hwy and for me not so bad (self preser-what?) but I think the other guys didn’t appreciate the high-speed traffic on wet roads. Around Dagenham DavidK froze a CO2 canister to his hand (ow!) repairing a puncture on this ?7500 Serotta (yes, he could trade in his bike for the whole of Australia!) and we changed route to back roads (the A1306?).

Avoiding a pikey camp we found a path and made it onto an overpass for a group photo. We past a sign for ‘Rainham’ – how appropriate! Then again, we also rode along ‘Dry Street’ later in the ride and that wasn’t a very accurate name at the time. Mareeoh suffered another puncture.

Owing to a total lack of food in my house I’d had a piece of toast and black coffee for breakfast. Owing to a lack of bottle mounts on my track bike I carried 500ml of liquid in my bag and half pack of Bassett’s Animal Mix (think Natural Confectionary Company lollies). End result of this was running out of energy on a relatively small climb called Langdon? Hills. I could barely turn the pedals over and almost had to walk. Uh oh. Did make it to the top where I downed all my remaining drink and hoped for flat roads!

We had a couple more hills along the way but not as bad. On one downhill I managed to pass DavidK at 32mph trying to chase down Roberto. Attempting a skid while your legs are doing 160rpm isn’t smart.. as I found out when I went all gumby at the bottom of the hill. Around here I think we had a minor collision between slamm and photoben. I’d already gone the wrong way so missed the carnage. I did find a blinky though and wasted a lot more energy getting it back to photoben! I think I was excited we were nearly there.

We grouped up at a set of lights almost at the coast and waited.. and waited.. photoben had punctured. Regrouping we had a great, grinning run down to the water-front.

Sweeeeeet!!! We made it!!! The esplanade was fenced off but the cops let us in and we rolled along its length, looking at the fairground atmosphere.

There was an airshow on. Jets zoomed by over-head, a chinook chopper did some sickening almost vertical flying and a sea-plane groaned past. Another group photo then somehow we locked 8 bikes with 3 small locks and ate fish and chips. Eventually rolling off we found the station and a nearby pub to enjoy a pint in. Nice. DavidK had someone to meet but the rest of us piled into a train carriage for a fun trip back to London Liverpool St.

Said ‘adios’ to all and rode back to Ealing, fscked. Ate and drank from about 6pm to 2am! Next time I’ll definitely take more food and drink.

Big thanks to: DavidK, photoben, Roberto, mareeoh, brett, slamm, mdja? for a top ride!

Stats: 5hr total time, 3hr ride time, 75k (47mi) for Seven Dials to Southend, making my total for the day 105k fixed, in horrible conditions. Noice!

Other People’s Photos

London FGSS thread

Original Route

Revised Route(ish)

mdja’s More Accurate Route(tm)

26:50 equates to another 30 seconds off my previous time with no changes other than the shorter, flipped stem (and a rusty chain!). Is nice. I like.

I was off first (if only I was Number 1 AFTER the race and not before it!) and planned to do 2:45 for the first lap and 2:15’s for subsequent laps. I took off hard and ended up doing the first lap in 2:15. Um.. whoops. Damage control. Slowed but the damage had been done and my legs were failing around laps 7 and 8. The westerly wind wasn’t as bad as last time but it was still windy (is this circuit ever still?!?!). Ripped up lap 11, probably doing myself permanent harm but it was all good with the new PB. Getting into the 25’s on my Audax bike is gonna be tricky though.. anyone wanna donate this?

I volunteered to marshall Le Tour and attended a briefing session the other night in Regent’s College. It was all very slick, with videos, role-playing and a little pocket guide outlining the course and listing do’s/dont’s. Apparently all those who attend the training sessions will be assured a place at their nominated stage – mine being the Prologue around central London.

It’s going to be a long day and we are there primarily to answer questions from the public and act as the ‘eyes and ears’ for the trained event staff and security teams. Regardless, after the training session I was feeling just a tad proud to be helping at such a prestigious event. Aww.. 🙂

For more info:

letourguide.com

tourdefrancelondon.com

Today’s club run was wet. Very wet. I now look like a stoner who’s given up caring about how wasted he looks – my eyes are red and puffy after collecting three kilos of road grit.. each.

If I’d swapped out the dark lenses in my sunnies for clear I could’ve worn them AND seen where I was going. At least I had the sense (for once) to kit up in some warm gear after noting the forecast for “heavy rain” followed by “heavy rain” and then washed down with some “heavy rain”.

We (only about 7 of us? Not even “Map Man” Martin showed) ended up cutting the ride short. To be honest I don’t know where we went – there was a boat chugging along a river near the cafe, if that helps?

I spent the way back rubbing grit into my eyes, hoping not to hit anything, and watching the lightning which doesn’t appear in London very often. My legs were like lead at the end, even with the ride finishing a good 2 hours earlier than usual. I was out until 1am for Paula’s birthday at the Boathouse in Putney followed by a visit to Walkabout to see Mal’s friends Iwona and Maciek but that’s not usually an issue. Did spend an unusual amount of time in pubs on Friday but, again, not a biggie. Maybe the 10kg of extra water soaked into me did me in?

Here’s a similar report from someone with an actual grasp of the English language:

pickled-hedgehog.com – “Duckin? hell, that was wet.”

Out:

41.5k, 1:37, 26.3kph, 123/164bpm

Back:

42.1k, 1:36, 27.6kph, 136/172bpm

Writing a reply to Wychy’s earlier comments about frame geometry, I remembered I was going to check www.ribble.co.uk to see if their road frame differed from their Winter/Audax frame (the one I own).

Looking through the table of figures I find the 56cm and work through the values, noticing the top-tube length is 58.. um.. what? 58cm? That’s not.. But.. I.. um.. measured it already and it was 56cm.. err.. wasn’t it?

I remember looking at this table before I bought the bike and thinking “56cm square = cool” but now looking at the table I reckon I’ve read from the wrong column(s)! A1 instead of A and read across to a top-tube of 55.8cm, thinking “fine” when in fact I should have been seeing 58 and thinking “no no no”.

I rush over to the bike with the tape measure, rub my eyes and look.. 58cm.

Frickin’ hell! Fifty EIGHT not Fifty SIX like I thought. No fricking wonder I’ve always felt over-stretched and suffer from sore arms!!

Ribble 7005 Frame Geometry:

A A1 B D a? b?

46 50 53.5 400 75 72

48 52 54 400 75 72

50 54 55 400 74 73

52 56 55.8 400 74 73

54 58 57 400 74 73

56 60 58 400 74 73

58 62 58.8 400 74 73

Today’s club run involved rocking up to Denham 45min early (me = dumbass) followed by a short (1.5hr) outbound trip, a long (1hr) coffee stop and then a fast, hilly return to Denham with a ‘grrr’ super-speed return-to-Ealing chaser. It didn’t rain after all and sitting at 45kph with the tailwind along Uxbridge was cool. Sitting on 55kph drafting a car was even more fun.

Distance: 118k

Outbound HRavg: 125bpm

Return HRavg: 144bpm

Preparation increased for this 10 miler – I rode the Ribble to work so it didn’t feel totally foreign to me like last time.

Getting to the circuit was fine and with someone else’s helped I numbered up – 17 this time, starting sooner.

It wasn’t until I made my way onto the track that I noticed the hideous wind, hitting me straight in the face going up the longer hill to the start line. My HR was over 160bpm just crawling up to the line! In my typical defeatist fashion I dismissed all hopes of beating my last time of 28:18 and actually regretted paying ?3.50 just to set a slower time.

Chatting to Ed before the start, he’d brought out Louis(?) who’d done a 24(?) in his first 10 last weekend. What’s with all these fast TT’ers? Maybe training on the bike rather than in a pub is the difference?

I left the start line quickly and actually managed to slow myself down this time, vowing not to blow up in two laps. After the downhill sweeper, the wind was painful again up the short sharp hill but then it was big gear time all the way down the back straight. In the later laps I was holding the same high gear all through this until rounding the corner on “awcrap!” hill and gearing right down to spin up it.

I wanted 2:15 per lap and the first was 2:45. Damn. But, after 4 laps I was under 5min, ie. beating 2:30 per lap which was still faster than my last attempt. I kept ahead of my last 10mi time for the whole ride, even with the harsher conditions. On the final lap I didn’t gear down and pushed through until the finish line to set a new best of 27:20. Almost a minute quicker than my last ride and in harder conditions – a 26 should be easily obtainable with no wind. I must have been well out of redline this ride as I not only managed to calculate lap times and the fact I was up, I even managed to ride the correct number of laps!!! Carl would be proud..

Update:

Using the Polar software to compare these the two TTs, it’s apparent that my HR doesn’t alter more than a few bpm between the races, even though the second week is a minute faster and the wind stronger. At some points my HR is actually dead even. Is this training benefit derived from the previous TT? Less nerves in the second race? Something else?

Distance: 10.23mi

Avg. Speed: 35.8kph

HRmax: 192bpm

HRavg: 178bpm