Financial Times London Cycle Sportive 11th May 2014
Last year in June I did a similar cycle sportive with Robert. This time we decided to cycle 100 miles instead of 100 kilometres.
My bike training after my half marathon in Bratislava Slovakia was so so. The weather wasn't ideal as it was more rainy then sunny. At least I was mentally prepared for such a long distance.
We started off in Dulwich Park in London early in the morning. The route was going towards to the North Downs with stunning views over Surrey taking in Box Hill and Biggin Hill, then it carried onto Reigate and Dorking where it continued in a Northerly direction back to the North Downs way at Ranmore Common. The climbs totalled 1098 metres with a max elevation of 275 metres.
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On the first steep hill a guy got off his bike and he stopped right in front me. I couldn't overtake him because there was mud in the middle of the road. Luckily I was fast enough to unclip my foot from the pedal. That hill was so steep that I had to walk for a bit and jump on my bike later. I was little bit upset about it because I don't like stopping on the hills.
There were several hills but on the last quite long one (Pinch Hill), I was pushing and overtook some people who walked on it. Even Robert decided to have a little break. During the whole race there were many visible signs to show us the route. Lots of marshals were involved too so no one could get lost. It was very well organised.
Around 65 miles we were going down hill very fast around 25 miles per hour when a fox decided to cross the road when Robert was approaching. Robert shouted at her so she immediately stopped and went back to the forest. We could have had an accident as I was right behind Robert.
We had 3 feeding stops. We spent around 10 minutes on each stop. We ate bananas and pretzels. I had a 2 cups of pretzels on each station. I really like them.
The weather was reasonably good. We were lucky that the rain held off as the previous day there had been many heavy showers. The sun was coming through the clouds which was very nice but temperature was around 11 degrees.
It was a nice finish at the Velodrome at Herne Hill in London where professional cyclists train. We did 104 miles within 7hours and 48 minutes. Our average speed was 13.3 miles per hour. We got medals too. Surprisingly I wasn't tired at all and I still had some buzz which is good for my Ironman training. ;0)
Robert says: it was a great day. I hadn't realised that one person could eat so many pretzels - now I know what fuel Karin runs on. The incident with the fox was very scary - the three of us were nearly in a heap in the road. Fortunately the fox had good reactions.
