The Big Cycle
Jun. 29th, 2019 10:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
braisedbywolvesSo a few things have happened since I posted last - the big one is that I got married, but I'm going to start with a different one that I probably have less thoughts about, just to break the silence.
I cycle a lot these days, as many of you probably know. It's good solid exercise, and on my 40-minute commute there's a reasonably calm stretch (until I hit The City, basically), that I use to listen to things - a politics podcast* on the way in, and anything I want on the way home - sometime something on Youtube, though unless you pay money for it, you have to be careful that your pocket doesn't close the app or pick another video or whatever.
And twice a year (ideally), I've been doing a 100km cycle around London, spring and autumn. I hadn't done one in a while due to arm trouble, my elbow in 2017 and my shoulder last year. But I completed one in October last year, and it went well enough - it helps that by this stage I don't need the route guide at all. I had to sit back a bit more and take the weight off my arms, or my shoulder would complain a lot by then end, but it still worked, it still counted. I had at some point a plan to cycle the section from Chelsea Bridge to Hammersmith with George, over the course of a day - instead that's been remixed to walking it with Jen over the course of several days (two so far, with some more to come)
Spring and autumn are the best times to do a day cycle like that - but sometime over winter I saw a poster advertising a charity night-time cycle in early June. I signed up, and picked the 100k over the 50k version. You get a fair amount of support (including a bike service which I failed to take advantage of), including a training regimen which I thought I'd try rather than my usual tactic of just commuting every day and then - ta-da! - a 100k that kills me.
The 'try to cycle 10k several times a week' wasn't a bother - that's just my commute. It recommended a bit of strength training, which I thought I'd be in principle in favour of, except for the line "Each exercise
should include 3 sets of 10-15 repetitions (reps) so that muscle failure occurs on the last set", which reminded me why I have never been interested in big muscles.
The main part then was going out for big cycles in the weekends leading up to the event, which would take me out for a chunk of hours - mostly just adding together cycle routes I knew around the Hackney or Haringey borders. In the month before I had to do two 50k cycles, so I took the opportunity to practice the actual course - the 50k version of the event is a loop from the Velodrome in the Olympic park over to the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth and back (which handily goes by my office, where I could stash my bike the day before the practive) and the extra bits are loops out to the west and the south from the IWM.
On the day, I tried vainly to get some sleep from 5 to 9pm, and then headed out the door - at which point a bit fell off my bike that had never before fallen off. It's the bike chain guard which sits by the big gears and stops the chain leaping off the big one to its death - when I showed the mechanics at the Velodrome, they were pretty certain I wouldn't miss it, and they were right.
The route there was just on the Overground to Hackney Downs, over the connecting covered passage to Hackney Central, and then over to Hackney Wick. There's a bit of a hill entering the Olympic Park from there, nothing terrible - but we will return to this later.
The feeling at being there at the start with everyone was pretty cool, even if the soundtrack was generic cock rock. They send the 100k participants out at 15-minute waves - or rather they send them out in 30-40 person subwaves as soon as they can get enough together - I asked early and got sent out early, in one of the last 10:45 waves rather than the 11:00 wave.
I didn't realise that the first section was literally around the Olympic Velopark course, which was cool and also the best road surface of the night. After that I set off at a decent speed - I caught up to the first subwave ahead before leaving the Olympic Park, but it's only really the first 25k that had anything like distinct groups. The route takes you over the north end of Victoria Park, over towards Arsenal Stadium, and then on to counter clockwise around Regent's park, along Oxford Street and over Waterloo Bridge.
I had brought the dongle that lets you listen to and charge an iPhone at the same time, but I'd left my iPhone headphones at home - in the end it was the corner shop nearest to my old flat on Middleton Road that sold me one, from a cylinder of them newly birthed. And at the turning by Arsenal Stadium, I got off, had some sustenance (a triangle off the two enormous Toblerones that I'd chosen as suitable food), watched as one of the whizzy cyclists lost their water bottle (I put it on the sidewalk, lord knows when he realised that it was missing), and sorted out myself for music - with my iPhone playing Tom Waits to me and recording my position, it would need a little juice to keep on for 8 hours. The rest of the opening section was fairly straightforward - the town wasn't quite quiet yet, but not everything was quite bearable.
The Nightrider team had taken over the front gardens of the Imperial War Museum, with a cafe and mechanics and portaloos. I set off with a spring in my step for the next leg, and then not far into it realised that the rechargeable bike light, having reported itself ready for action recently, was giving up the ghost after only two hours. I tried hard to hang about with groups of cyclists from then on, which meant trying to have some of the food and drink stops on the go.
The 'out' part was fairly well lit and peopled, winding around bits of Whitehall before heading up to Knightsbridge, over to the Albert Hall, and then down Exhibition Road past all the museums. After that it was a little lonely in parts as it headed west to the river - I made a friend by means of recognising from my previous spin around the loop that one of the signs was missing, and that we had gone off course.
It helped that this part overlapped a bit with my 'regular' 100k, but in reverse - Hurlingham Park, which had been full of Polo when myself and Jen walked past earlier in the year, was now full of drunk toffs clutching bottles at 1.30 am. The last section was just back along the river to Lambeth Bridge, past 5 others.
And back at the Museum, the mechanics were happy to just give me a new light for gratis, which still adorns my bike.
I met an older gentleman at the Museum this time, who said he hadn't been on it for five years - "of course back then you went all the way around, you know - Crystal Palace and Alexandra Palace".
Fortunately it was just the one this time - it was a mostly quite quiet run, down to Vauxhall and then inland, past the Royal Vauxhall Tavern at about 2:30, which was having quite the night, Police and Ambulance.
Then down and around the Oval, and south towards Brixton, over to Herne Hill before eventually heading for the pull up Crystal Palace - it wasn't a lot of fun (the front of my knees was starting to hurt every time I started moving from a stop), but I'm really glad that I made it to the top while others were walking their bikes.
Then a swift downhill to the Horniman Museum, and up Honor Oak Road, which during the day has one of the best views in the city. There's a vicious hill up from it (which I only made halfway up - there's a Nightrider employee on the corner yelling at everyone to switch to their lowest gear NOW, and I wish I had) and what would actually be the best view in London a little later, when dawn finally broke. And then downhill and downhill some more, feeling pretty invincible - through Peckham and then on a series of back roads which seem pretty fiddly until you realise that the point is not going through through the Elephant & Castle junctions.
And then the slog begins. The last 25k is very scenic - Buckingham Palace! Piccadilly Circus! Cambridge Circus! Longacre! Smithfield Markets! St. Pauls! Bank! The Embankment !?! - but my life force was running low at this stage. At the turn around the front of Buckingham Palace I was re-united with my friend from the Chelsea leg, and I did my best to keep up with her and her group for the rest of it.
As a result, I probably didn't eat and drink as much as I should have on this stage - they were giving out bananas at the Museum, and finding one in my bag when I was looking for my sunglasses was a delight. I kept up with the group until I stopped at a traffic lights on the Bow Road, and then on they sped towards the end.
The last section took me back near Hackney Wick, and up that last hill - I made it back at pretty much exactly 6am, and received a medal and a breakfast bacon roll.
And then the worst bit was going home - back down the hill to Hackney Wick which wouldn't open for several hours, and then up that damned hill to Stratford to get the train in to Liverpool Street, rushing off to get the 7:00 to Stamford Hill - but the first of those is at 7:30, so it wasn't until 8 before I was home and trying to sleep.
But it was done, and it was good to be done, and thanks to extraordinary generosity from friends and workmates, there's nearly a grand heading towards Mind.
* Or more accurately, Politico's UK Playbook, which has a button you can press that will play it read via Amazon Polly, which is a reasonably good automated reading service. I mean, I guess it's reasonably good, this is the only automated reading service I listen to. Its main problem, which I can't rally blame it for, is that it reads r-o-w as in "and column" not as in "a fight", and it's basically never the former in UK Politics. Also the week when the report was sponsored by an Agriscience company, which it quite reasonably read out as ag-rissence.
I cycle a lot these days, as many of you probably know. It's good solid exercise, and on my 40-minute commute there's a reasonably calm stretch (until I hit The City, basically), that I use to listen to things - a politics podcast* on the way in, and anything I want on the way home - sometime something on Youtube, though unless you pay money for it, you have to be careful that your pocket doesn't close the app or pick another video or whatever.
And twice a year (ideally), I've been doing a 100km cycle around London, spring and autumn. I hadn't done one in a while due to arm trouble, my elbow in 2017 and my shoulder last year. But I completed one in October last year, and it went well enough - it helps that by this stage I don't need the route guide at all. I had to sit back a bit more and take the weight off my arms, or my shoulder would complain a lot by then end, but it still worked, it still counted. I had at some point a plan to cycle the section from Chelsea Bridge to Hammersmith with George, over the course of a day - instead that's been remixed to walking it with Jen over the course of several days (two so far, with some more to come)
Spring and autumn are the best times to do a day cycle like that - but sometime over winter I saw a poster advertising a charity night-time cycle in early June. I signed up, and picked the 100k over the 50k version. You get a fair amount of support (including a bike service which I failed to take advantage of), including a training regimen which I thought I'd try rather than my usual tactic of just commuting every day and then - ta-da! - a 100k that kills me.
The 'try to cycle 10k several times a week' wasn't a bother - that's just my commute. It recommended a bit of strength training, which I thought I'd be in principle in favour of, except for the line "Each exercise
should include 3 sets of 10-15 repetitions (reps) so that muscle failure occurs on the last set", which reminded me why I have never been interested in big muscles.
The main part then was going out for big cycles in the weekends leading up to the event, which would take me out for a chunk of hours - mostly just adding together cycle routes I knew around the Hackney or Haringey borders. In the month before I had to do two 50k cycles, so I took the opportunity to practice the actual course - the 50k version of the event is a loop from the Velodrome in the Olympic park over to the Imperial War Museum in Lambeth and back (which handily goes by my office, where I could stash my bike the day before the practive) and the extra bits are loops out to the west and the south from the IWM.
On the day, I tried vainly to get some sleep from 5 to 9pm, and then headed out the door - at which point a bit fell off my bike that had never before fallen off. It's the bike chain guard which sits by the big gears and stops the chain leaping off the big one to its death - when I showed the mechanics at the Velodrome, they were pretty certain I wouldn't miss it, and they were right.
The route there was just on the Overground to Hackney Downs, over the connecting covered passage to Hackney Central, and then over to Hackney Wick. There's a bit of a hill entering the Olympic Park from there, nothing terrible - but we will return to this later.
The feeling at being there at the start with everyone was pretty cool, even if the soundtrack was generic cock rock. They send the 100k participants out at 15-minute waves - or rather they send them out in 30-40 person subwaves as soon as they can get enough together - I asked early and got sent out early, in one of the last 10:45 waves rather than the 11:00 wave.
I didn't realise that the first section was literally around the Olympic Velopark course, which was cool and also the best road surface of the night. After that I set off at a decent speed - I caught up to the first subwave ahead before leaving the Olympic Park, but it's only really the first 25k that had anything like distinct groups. The route takes you over the north end of Victoria Park, over towards Arsenal Stadium, and then on to counter clockwise around Regent's park, along Oxford Street and over Waterloo Bridge.
I had brought the dongle that lets you listen to and charge an iPhone at the same time, but I'd left my iPhone headphones at home - in the end it was the corner shop nearest to my old flat on Middleton Road that sold me one, from a cylinder of them newly birthed. And at the turning by Arsenal Stadium, I got off, had some sustenance (a triangle off the two enormous Toblerones that I'd chosen as suitable food), watched as one of the whizzy cyclists lost their water bottle (I put it on the sidewalk, lord knows when he realised that it was missing), and sorted out myself for music - with my iPhone playing Tom Waits to me and recording my position, it would need a little juice to keep on for 8 hours. The rest of the opening section was fairly straightforward - the town wasn't quite quiet yet, but not everything was quite bearable.
The Nightrider team had taken over the front gardens of the Imperial War Museum, with a cafe and mechanics and portaloos. I set off with a spring in my step for the next leg, and then not far into it realised that the rechargeable bike light, having reported itself ready for action recently, was giving up the ghost after only two hours. I tried hard to hang about with groups of cyclists from then on, which meant trying to have some of the food and drink stops on the go.
The 'out' part was fairly well lit and peopled, winding around bits of Whitehall before heading up to Knightsbridge, over to the Albert Hall, and then down Exhibition Road past all the museums. After that it was a little lonely in parts as it headed west to the river - I made a friend by means of recognising from my previous spin around the loop that one of the signs was missing, and that we had gone off course.
It helped that this part overlapped a bit with my 'regular' 100k, but in reverse - Hurlingham Park, which had been full of Polo when myself and Jen walked past earlier in the year, was now full of drunk toffs clutching bottles at 1.30 am. The last section was just back along the river to Lambeth Bridge, past 5 others.
And back at the Museum, the mechanics were happy to just give me a new light for gratis, which still adorns my bike.
I met an older gentleman at the Museum this time, who said he hadn't been on it for five years - "of course back then you went all the way around, you know - Crystal Palace and Alexandra Palace".
Fortunately it was just the one this time - it was a mostly quite quiet run, down to Vauxhall and then inland, past the Royal Vauxhall Tavern at about 2:30, which was having quite the night, Police and Ambulance.
Then down and around the Oval, and south towards Brixton, over to Herne Hill before eventually heading for the pull up Crystal Palace - it wasn't a lot of fun (the front of my knees was starting to hurt every time I started moving from a stop), but I'm really glad that I made it to the top while others were walking their bikes.
Then a swift downhill to the Horniman Museum, and up Honor Oak Road, which during the day has one of the best views in the city. There's a vicious hill up from it (which I only made halfway up - there's a Nightrider employee on the corner yelling at everyone to switch to their lowest gear NOW, and I wish I had) and what would actually be the best view in London a little later, when dawn finally broke. And then downhill and downhill some more, feeling pretty invincible - through Peckham and then on a series of back roads which seem pretty fiddly until you realise that the point is not going through through the Elephant & Castle junctions.
And then the slog begins. The last 25k is very scenic - Buckingham Palace! Piccadilly Circus! Cambridge Circus! Longacre! Smithfield Markets! St. Pauls! Bank! The Embankment !?! - but my life force was running low at this stage. At the turn around the front of Buckingham Palace I was re-united with my friend from the Chelsea leg, and I did my best to keep up with her and her group for the rest of it.
As a result, I probably didn't eat and drink as much as I should have on this stage - they were giving out bananas at the Museum, and finding one in my bag when I was looking for my sunglasses was a delight. I kept up with the group until I stopped at a traffic lights on the Bow Road, and then on they sped towards the end.
The last section took me back near Hackney Wick, and up that last hill - I made it back at pretty much exactly 6am, and received a medal and a breakfast bacon roll.
And then the worst bit was going home - back down the hill to Hackney Wick which wouldn't open for several hours, and then up that damned hill to Stratford to get the train in to Liverpool Street, rushing off to get the 7:00 to Stamford Hill - but the first of those is at 7:30, so it wasn't until 8 before I was home and trying to sleep.
But it was done, and it was good to be done, and thanks to extraordinary generosity from friends and workmates, there's nearly a grand heading towards Mind.
* Or more accurately, Politico's UK Playbook, which has a button you can press that will play it read via Amazon Polly, which is a reasonably good automated reading service. I mean, I guess it's reasonably good, this is the only automated reading service I listen to. Its main problem, which I can't rally blame it for, is that it reads r-o-w as in "and column" not as in "a fight", and it's basically never the former in UK Politics. Also the week when the report was sponsored by an Agriscience company, which it quite reasonably read out as ag-rissence.
