Training - Tour de Londres

Took a ride in the sun with Tommy, Ben and Jack yesterday. They're all training for Sandy Balls, a half Ironman and needed to get 50 miles done today so we teamed up for mutual benefit (after all I need to get a few miles under my belt as well). Once I started planning a route I realised 50 miles around London allows you to see quite a bit of the City.

Here's where we went,












We set off late morning heading down the Euston road, across Hyde Park and over Hammersmith Bridge. Richmond park was as usual beautiful, but quite a few cars with the warm weather. We passed a small herd of Fallow deer by the road. The stags still had velvet over the Antlers, this will all be off by the time I return form Africa.













In the park Jacks's front brake fell off and I was stung by a bee (yes OK not much of a war wound, but I was going quite rapid when I took this bullet!),








Then back through Central London along the Embankment, over Tower Bridge to Greenwich, crossing back north of the river on the Woolwich ferry,

... through Canary Wharf and the City and back up to Islington.

Great ride, but ominously I started bonking in the last km to Angel. Think I'd just gone a bit hard from the ferry back through the Docklands and forgotten to eat anything. Felt pretty knackered. Was worried because this was only just over 80km and, as you can see from the previous post, I'll regularly need to be passing well beyond over this distance if I want to get ocean to ocean under my own steam. But the difference is speed. We covered this distance (including stops) in three and a half hours. I'll have 12-13 hrs of day light (admittedly the middle of the day may well not be rideable due to heat - particularly in the Kalahari) but this will allow me to go much, much slower.

When I think about things which may stop me covering the distance in the allotted time (my physical ability, equipment failures, getting sick etc...) I'm imaging a bus stalking me to scoop me up and take me to Maputo... as a failure, something like the car following the top gear presenters on some of their challenges a voiture balai.

...as I waited outside Waitrose for Tommy to bring my some chocolate milk and tantastics the bus of doom felt very close.