A rider luckily missed the storm
Saturday was my last serious training day for the 1st July 120 epic. I’ve come to hate these things, they’re bloody hard work, they take so long and you feel utterly done in afterwards. The circular journey has started to feel a bit boring and repetitive, circular even. This time however, my journey was characterised by a certain good fortune.
I started with six laps of the park before my first break, and the moment I staggered off the bike to slump on one of the picnic benches beneath the trees at Roehampton picnic area, the heavens opened. It rained hard for 35 mins, only a bit longer than I had planned to spend resting before the sun came out again. Steam then poured off puddles as I strained past.
Energy becomes a premium when cycling long distance, and as I had previously just sustained myself with a breakfast of porridge and then fig rolls and dates, this time I’d prepared a bit better. I cooked myself a huge pile of noodles with a tuna sauce for breakfast, and during the ride tried some swanky gels that I bought in Decathlon. The huge breakfast was a good idea - keeping me in better form than normal. The first gel turned out to be honey with crunchy bits in it and seemed ok, but the second one was a proper synthetic number and definitely seemed to give me a bit of oomph. For a few minutes anyway. Only when I turned for home did I actually get caught in the rain proper, but then I was homeward bound so it didn’t matter so much.
Yesterday I took the bike in for a ‘grade one service’ at Evans, and now it rides like a hot bike through butter. Today I did my final longer, 15 mile, ride into work. So I think I am ready and primed to go.
Incidentally, today I noticed a really, really irritating cycling habit this morning: people who cycle in a really low gear and have their seats adjusted far too low. It’s utterly infuriating seeing people pedaling at 100 miles an hour, usually travelling at a snail’s pace, with their bums barely off the ground - and a completely energy inefficient way of doing it too.