“He began to think of the fun he had planned for this day,…” Adventures of Tom Sawyer, M. Twain

In reality it is now May, but I’ve been busy, and not had a chance to post my little diary. Still catching up with myself, but here’s one I made earlier…. only a short one

I enjoyed my cycling session today.  In fact I was relieved at having done it.  I took a slice of cake I baked yesterday with me, instead of the usual energy bars, and after the session I parked the bike in a rack near the park, bought a coffee at a Park Café, perched down on a bench in full sun and just sat there for a while warming myself and watching the world go by.  The whole chain of activities made me feel like I’ve had a bit of a day of it.  

In an odd way, I feel like the 23.6 kms around Battersea Park are a bit of a cheat, and I don’t expect to feel any residual fatigue tomorrow.  It’s because Battersea Park is actually very flat.  There is a tiny incline on one side of the alley – and I think my app does track that – no idea how.  Either way, it’s nowhere near as steep as the Horse Guards Bitch Hill. (I will only stop calling it Bitch Hill after I’m able to cycle right-up to Albert Monument without lowering the gears and getting completely out of breath). 

Thus, it felt a bit of a cheat.  Although as mentioned previously, I was also aiming for increasing my average speed, which I have managed to do – up to 15 kph (just over) – yey.  The nice thing about Battersea Park though, is that it’s almost uninterrupted cycling.  There are no traffic lights to watch-out or pedestrian crossing; and most of the time it’s possible to cycle around pedestrians and keep on going.  For some reason in Hyde Park, there are one or two spots, which do interject the loops.  And of course cycling along the cycling roads, one is constantly stopping and starting. It’s great for getting a bit of a respite, but not great for accurate speed measurements and building resistance.

There is a downside to the flat route in Battersea Park though – would you believe it.  Because it is flat, in order to keep the momentum one has no choice, but to continuously peddle.  There are very few if any of those lovely downward sloping stretches that allow you to get lift your feet of the pedals and get some respite.  In Hyde Park there are plenty of those – even the Horse Guards hill – there is an incline and decline that allows one to cruise for at least 200 to 300 metres, without any effort, or the cycling path cutting across the park has a downward stretch.  So whilst on the face of it Battersea Park feels like a cheat’s cycle – it isn’t really.  It pushes the training in a slightly different direction.

Either way, I’ve done it. I went out, peddled a little, increased my average speed, stuffed my face with cake and all in all felt better for it. I have to increase my distance though – after all this is meant to be endurance training. I’m nowhere near doing 70kms a day yet. I might have done a 40 and 30, but there’s a whole lot of kilometres between that and my target. In April. In April I will increase my distance, and also frequency. I’ll be training up to 3 times a week – that’s my plan.