Ride London 100 - what a great day! And over £1600 raised for Prostate Cancer UK

So the day finally arrived, the Ride London 100 cycle ride, the event that had got me back on a bike and fit again and the culmination of 11 months of hard work.

My preparation had gone well as had the fund-raising, as a last minute push I said I would shave my legs (A strange tradition amongst cyclists apparently) if I reached my target of £1500. I thought I was safe until some last minute donations started to roll in. I was a little alarmed by "friends" who wanted the legs waxed rather than shaved on the grounds that it was more painful. (The total now as I write is £1615 or £1928.75 including gift aid)

Shaving the legs was a lot more difficult and took a lot longer than I thought it would, glad I don't have to do it often! Having said that it did feel quite nice......


A last minute kit check and I was good to get started on the drive to the IBIS in Stratford, a stones throw from the Ride London start. After checking in and depositing the bike in the room I Parked in the Westfield shopping centre (a bargain £5 for 24 hours). My mate Rob joined me later, Rob had an earlier start than me so alarms were set for 4am! Did we sleep? Not really sure, we were certainly both awake at 4am when the alarm went off. A breakfast of mainly of carbs and caffeine and then get the kit on after a careful application of chamois cream to the "undercarriage".

It was only a short ride to the start, no worries about knowing where to go, just follow the lines of cyclists also on their way to the start. I deposited my bag at the luggage check-in to be transported to the finish at the Mall. The whole start area was full of people preaparing for the ride. You could almost touch the excitement. The first waves of cyclists were sent on their way, started by good old Boris. There were 19 waves from each of the black and blue starts with about 500 riders in each wave, I was in wave "L". Loading started 30 minutes before my ride time of 7:06, I looked down at my heart rate monitor, it was 110 and I was just standing still! That's adrenaline for you!

Moving out onto the road, then a countdown and we are off! The first 2 miles were a neutralised zone before the official start line this is to sort the riders out and make the start safer. My initial thoughts were jeez this is fast! I decided just to hold back a little not wanting to get too carried away 100 miles is a long way. Riding through red lights on traffic free roads with big wide roads was fantastic, no other way to describe it. Through the Limehouse Link tunnel it was still fast and furious and then a mechanical problem, I hit a pothole and my saddle tilted forward as I landed on it. Nothing else for it but to stop and sort it out, it only took a couple of minutes but it meant that I lost the group I was riding with.




 Along the embankment, up Northumberland Street and Trafagar Square, Pall Mall, Piccadilly and onto the A4 past Harrods and over the Hammersmith Flyover normally teeming with traffic but today only cyclists. A left towards Chiswick Bridge and then into Richmond Park. Progress through the park was slow as the road narrowed and it got a bit congested aspecially at the first slight climb of the day at Sawyers Hill, not really a hill just an incline.

On to Kingston and Hampton Court the scene of the London 2012 Cycling Time Trial where I watched Bradley Wiggins ride to Olympic Gold following on from his Tour De France victory and hoping that I could get some inspiration.Onward through the outskirts of London and into Surrey. This was the hardest part of the course with several testing climbs, the first was Newlands Corner which I breezed up passing many other riders on the way. I planned to stop at the food hub just after the Hill to refill my bottles with energy drinks and to grab some food.

A long descent followed on the way to the foot of Leith Hill which was always going to be the toughest hill, it was slow going due to the congestion caused mainly by people getting off to walk up. The rewards were a very long but tricky and fast descent to the A25 and then into Dorking where there were big crowds to cheer on the riders. On the other side of Dorking was Box Hill, the last of the big climbs made famous by the London 2012 Olympic roadrace where the riders went up it 9 times! Fortunately we were only doing it once. I made good progress up Box Hill and was delighted that my friends Paul and Sarah spotted me and gave me a big cheer. It certainly gave me a boost I even managed a wave to one of the official Photographers!

There is a long descent from the top of Box Hill down to Leatherhead, normally you have to take a lot of care because of cars, not today though, using both sides of the road and knowing that you wern't suddenly going to meet an oncoming vehicle improved the speed no end. Coming back through Kingston I got a huge cheer from the Prostate Cancer UK team, I missed them on the way out but they were in fine voice on the way back. It was now almost flat going back into London, apart from Wimbledon Hill which I think took a lot of people by surprise. I once got overtaken by the good Lord Seb Coe going up Wimbledon Hill in the Southern Road Relays back in my competetive running days. I remember it, I bet he doesn't.

My brother was supposed to have been on Wimbledon Hill to cheer me on, I'd given him an ETA but I was way ahead of that and it turned out that he arrived there after I had ridden through!  

From the top of Wimbledon Hill it was dead flat and with a tail wind I averaged over 23mph for the last 9 miles and that was without sitting in a group. Coming back into London was great, over Putney Bridge along the Chelsea Embankment, Millbank and then all of a sudden I was riding up Whitehall. I had a sneaky glance towards Horseguards, there were HUGE crowds cheering us all on, up to Trafalgar Square once again, a sharp left though Admiralty Arch and onto a final sprint up the Mall, huge crowds again all banging the hordings as you rode past and then......it was all over.....11 months of training for this moment.

Medal round my neck, goody bag in hand I collected my belongings from the lorry and made my way to the Prostate Cancer UK meeting point where I sat for an hour or so just relaxing.

My official finishing time was 5hrs 18mins 17secs this included the mechanical stop, and 2 stops for food and drink. My moving time was 5hrs 4mins 07secs according to my Garmin GPS.  This was way inside my target time of 5 hrs 45mins so I was initially delighted but then I got thinking could I have dipped under 5 hours? This is now the incentive that will drive me on as I stay healthy and age doesn't catch up with me.

It was a hugely emotional day for me, the build up, the ride and of course my reasons for doing it in memory of my dad who I lost over 4 years ago. I hope he would have been proud of me in fact I'm welling up now just thinking about it.

And finally I'd like to thank all the people who gave up some of their hard earned cash to sponsor me in aid of Prostate Cancer UK and to all the people who have supported me and sent messages of encouragement it really did help. A thank you as well to all my riding buddies over the last few months. And last of all to Prostate Cancer UK for giving me the opportunity to ride in this great event and be part of history because I'm sure this will become an event equal in status to the London Marathon but on wheels.

Thats all, I hope those who have read my blog have enjoyed it and been mildly enertained by it.

Alan

To sponsor me  please visit my fund raising page.    

There is nothing more that I can do!

4 days until the Ride London 100 and I'm excited! The training is all done now, I'll have a couple more easy rides just to keep the legs loose but as far as preparation is concerned I'm ready! Or as ready as I can be. Its been exactly 11 months since I started training and I'm very happy with the way that its gone, in fact I have surpassed my initial expectations and have had to reset goals along the way. I am in much better shape than I thought I could achieve in less than a year.

If all goes well on Sunday then I should complete it in around 5hrs 45 mins and if it goes really well then sub 5:30 may be possible which is 3 hours faster than my original estimate and an hour faster than the time that I put down when I registered for the event. Times are nice but my main goal is still to finish because a lot of people have sponsored me to do just that in aid of Prostate Cancer UK.

Whatever time I do, it is still going to be a unique experience riding through London past famous landmarks on closed roads with good crowds out to watch and cheer especially on the homeward stretch when the legs are getting tired. I know it will be difficult to control the adrenalin at the start, setting off too fast would be a mistake.

To try and encourage people to donate I had another Photoshoot this week. I promise this will be my last appearance as a "model". My thanks to Photographer Karen Knowlson and her lighting tech Mikko Summala for doing the pictures for me.

The fundraising has gone pretty well too, it was always going to be more difficult once I left work but the donations that have been made and the messages of support from friends and family (and some people that I hardly know) have been a great help to my motivation but more importantly will help Prostate Cancer UK in their work in fighting Prostate Cancer and supporting those that are affected by it.

As I sit writing this my total raised so far is £1335 (£1,611.25 with gift aid). I am still hopeful of reaching my £1500 target and I have promised to shave my legs and video it if I reach £1500 by Saturday now that should be an incentive!
To sponsor me  please visit my fund raising page.    

As I like Stats here a few:
In the last 11 months I have:

• Completed 167 Training rides (Excluding turbo sessions).
• Cycled a total of 6,025 miles.
• Spent 389 hours in the saddle.
• Done 87,000m of elevation(going uphill).
• Burnt approximately 174,000 calories.
• Lost 60 pounds in weight.

You can see the ride on BBC1 on Sunday the first transmission is 11:30-14:00 and the second transmission is 16:30-18:30 The whole event is on the red button from 9:00am.

So that's it, I hope that you have enjoyed reading my blog, its been fun writing it. There will be one more entry next week when hopefully I will be reporting a fun and successful ride and even more money raised. 

Only 11 days to go.....

Its only 11 days until the inaugural Ride London 100 ride so just starting to taper down my training, this means a couple more days off and shorter rides for the remaining time. Training now will have a negligible effect on my performance on the day so its about maintaining it, I always laugh at people who suddenly panic and start cramming training. It might work for an exam but not for a test of endurance.

Last week I went down to recce the Surrey Hills taking in the two main climbs in the RL100 namely Leith Hill and Box Hill. I have ridden Box Hill a couple of times before so had no concerns about it, it's a relatively easy climb, just long(ish). Leith Hill I had been told was much worse, actually it was not that bad and was just a long drag with a couple of steeper bits but nothing that worries me. The course I rode took in Box Hill twice, once at the start and once at the end. Also went up Boar Hill which is not part of the RL100 course but was far harder than either Box or Leith Hills. So mind at rest now, we hit Leith Hill at around the 60 mile point so some people will find it a different proposition on the day I suspect.

That's all for now, again a big thank you to all the people that have sponsored me, but there are a lot of people who have said that they will but haven't done so yet, well the good news is that its not too late so get that credit card out and pledge some money to Prostate Cancer UK on my fund raising page.