“And what are five miles from a station in these days of bicycles?” A room with a View, E. M. Foster

Distance Travelled: 23.6km; Total Distance Travelled: 217.9 kms; Days to holiday: 321;

This morning wasn’t so hard.  I was expecting the weather to be shitty, as it has been for the last few weekends, but it looks like the latest storm is making merry in the north and London is mostly left unscathed.  

The alarm went off at the usual 8:15 weekend setting, I snoozed it and opened my eyes at 8:47.  At least it was 8:47 not 10:47.  When I looked through the chink in the curtains I could see sun-light.  Bright, shiny day.  I couldn’t use the weather as an excuse – no matter how cold it was out there (6 degrees Celsius by the way).  If anything, I had to use the last 3 weeks as a stimulus to get me going.  9:15 I was out of the door, and heading for my local Boris Bike station. 

Today was only a little session – few loops around Battersea park – resulting in a fairly comfortable  23.6 kms.  The last 5 kms of which I need to thank for, to the guy doing loops in the same direction as me, although he was running.   

I often have people outrun me on my training session – not great, as it shows up how slow I am at cycling. Although it’s usually when I’m struggling up the Horse Guards Bitch Hill, towards the end of my session and my legs have no power left in them.  Today, conscious of my slow cycling speed, I was mindful of applying a bit more power, to ensure that I could out-cycle most of the runners.  It was for that reason, I have already decided I wasn’t going to push my distance to stupid levels today.  I was in effect out of practice by 3 weeks. 

Then I spotted this chap, whilst doing an ad-hoc loop in the opposite direction.  I could see that he was giving it some steam to his running session, but it wasn’t until I did a 180 on the mini park roundabout to follow in the same direction as the running-man (ha, the running man), that I realised how fast he was actually peddling.  I’m gonna venture a guess – from my cycling position, the chap was roughly 5’7”, so not much taller than me.  Probably weighed less, though clearly much more muscular and in much better shape.  

Anyway, by the time I did my 180, he was long gone from the south stretch of the park.  I knew by passing him in the opposite direction, that I wanted to catch-up with him, purely for fun.  It was going to be my little challenge to keep the ride more interesting and thus help me gain few more kilometres.  I didn’t realise it would take me 5kms to do so. 

From doing loops around Battersea Park before, I knew that it’s a distance of roughly 2.5kms on the inside circuit.  I gave it some steam myself to try and catch-up with the running man, and eventually saw the blue-flash of his shirt in the far of distance.  As I pushed my little legs to catch-up with him, I saw him time and again overtake other runners and some considerable speed.  It took me the first 2.5kms of the lap just to try and catch-up with him, and the second 2.5km struggling to keep up.   

For those in the know, you will know that Boris Bikes aren’t exactly the lightest cycling instrument  at 23 kilograms and today I actually managed to increase my average speed to over 15kph -nowhere near to the speed reached by professional athletes, but i’ll take it.

The weight of the bike clearly hindering my efforts to catch-up with the runner.  That chap must have been doing some serious speed and distance. I saw him do at least 2 more loops around the circuit, whilst I was resting with a cup of coffee near the zoo entrance.  He must have run a marathon distance by the time he was finished that morning.  I hope he’s there next time, he can be my pace-maker.

I’d love to go out cycling at last once on a normal, more light-weight road-bike.  But I have no space for one – literally no space.  On the other hand, however, I figure that the weight of the Boris bike is helping to improve my strength and push-power, because I have to exert so much more effort to get any speed and distance on a Boris Bike, so perhaps in the absence of any other exercise in my life – using the Red Cycling machines isn’t so bad after all. 

For now, I’m glad to have gotten out of the house, won another battle with myself.  What I’m most glad about though, is that last night I had a major cooking & baking session – resulting in lots of goodies ready to satisfy the hunger monster that visits me after every training session.  

That’s it for now, let’s see what the week brings.