After waiting two years to take part in the inaugural RideLondon-Essex cycling challenge, the biggest challenge was simply making it to the start
It shouldn’t annoy me to see someone riding a Brompton fold-up commuter bike, complete with the Brompton satchel strapped to the back, at mile 92, but it does. My legs are utterly spent, my arse feels like someone has had me naked, on all fours, for the last five hours while furiously rubbing sandpaper into my crack and sack. I’m aware some people would pay for this type of thing - just for the record, i’m not one of them - I have other vices and needs but that’s for a different blog.
But back to the man on the Brompton. He’s riding effortlessly, commuter style, he could have a latte in his hand, and I’m straining every muscle in my hollow legs to make sure I’m not beaten to the finish line by a Brompton. Thankfully I pulled off this little, pointless, battle, but to be honest it’s 2pm and I’ve been battling since 4.30am.
It didn’t start well - soundtrack to my life - despite my best efforts. I stayed with an aunt in Woodford the night before. A mile from the Central line station. My start time was 6.55am. Simple task of taking the Tube to Marble Arch, little ride to Westminster, and onto Victoria Embankment for the rolling start.
Standing with five or six other lycra-clad middle-aged men with expensive road bikes on the platform at 5.40am all seemed well. Until the tannoy crackled into life and a robotic voice said: “We are sorry to announce but there will be no Central line trains until 8am due to a fault blah blah blah.”
Bugger.
The calm atmosphere dissipated and now the challenge was to get from Essex to Westminster in time for the start. One of my fellow cyclists said he worked in Westminster and had ridden there a few times from Woodford. “Stick close,” he said. “Follow me but we’re going to have to shift it.”
And we did, through the leafy suburbs of Woodford and Wanstead, into east London, through Victoria Park, Mile End and down to the City and a network of streets as we sped through China Town, Piccadilly Circus, through Admiralty Arch, before sweeping down to Parliament Square. One thing I didn’t need before riding 100 miles, which would be the longest bike ride in more than a decade, was an extra 18 miles, without any breakfast or even a cup of coffee.
But we made it.
An expected organised chaos greeted us as we neared Westminster and were cajoled by smiley marshals with whistles and loudspeakers towards Victoria Embankment. Why does everyone else look fitter, with better bikes, better gear, bigger calfs?
It seems to take an age to get going. I feel like a need another wee, but cannot face another portable loo if it was going to be anything like the earlier experience where I was met with a mountain of shit spilling out of the pit like a putrid volcano. I held on, shuffled forward and as the speed increased I mounted my trusty Trek steed and began pedalling along the Embankment, the Thames on my right shimmering in the early morning light.
It’s a joyous experience to cycle through London without traffic. Sweeping along empty roads usually gridlocked with traffic, plunging into darkness under the long tunnel at Dundee Wharf and towards Canary Wharf up and back into the light, sweeping from left to right across the road, soaking up tarmac, we will never cycle like this in our lives, unless some great pandemic should sweep the globe and shut down the roads. But what are the chances of that?
I’m on the road with 20,000 cyclists. It’s like a biking revolution, taking over roads usually jam-packed with traffic pouring in and out of east London. I try to join the small groups of cyclists from various cycling clubs across the country - the North Tyneside Riders, the Cardiff Ajax Cycling Club - flying along at speed, but I can barely hang on for more than a few minutes and I watch as they disappear ahead and I’m alone again battling into a head wind, watching as the skies darken.
This was the inaugural event to be held in Essex. Since 2013 the ride was held over the 2012 Olympic route from Stratford into Surrey and back to London via Box Hill. I took part in the first year, in a country still basking in post-Olympic glory. Lining up next to me on a gloriously sunny morning was none other than London’s mayor Boris Johnson. Someone joked that we should watch out, ‘he’s probably going to be PM one day.’ Don’t be fucking daft I thought, he’s nothing more than an entitled, populist buffoon’. Chatting warmly and in his affable and bumbling slightly flustered manner, and declaring that he was unlikely to make the 100 mile route based on the people around him looking like they were made of mahogany.
I left our future lockdown-party-animal-PM as the suburbs of London turned green and leafy and past various residents arguing with marshals about being stuck at home for a day due to a ‘bloody bike ride’. You can’t please all the people all the time.
Back to 2022. How times have changed. The first 30-40 miles felt tough, relentless, grinding. I could not get comfortable on my bike. My feet were numb. My hands ached. I couldn’t find any rhythm. I passed the refreshment stop at Gt Dunmow and decided to get to Felsted at the 50-mile mark for a break. The playing fields of this impressive private school were already filled with thousands of cyclists when I arrived. No expense had been spared on bananas, packets of crisps, energy bars and gels. I planned to stop for five minutes, stock up and ride on. As my stats show, I stayed for 31 mins. I stretched, raised my saddle a few millimetres, ate two packets of crisps, two bananas and loaded up with energy bars and gels before setting off for the second half of the ride.
I learned a few things in my first 100-mile bike ride in 2013. The most important, and one I learned the hard way, was not to consume multiple energy gels and assume that would power me through from start to finish and make up for my lack of fitness. It didn’t. The only thing it did was turn my bowels into a vortex of volcanic activity that was both painful and thoroughly unpleasant for anyone cycling near me. I lost count of the times I had to apologise to people behind me and cycling past me as I let rip with relentless, violent and an almost continuous avalanche of wind. Appalling. ashamed. Every time I thought the pressure in my abdomen and bowel had abated, it would start to build again and there was only one place it was going.
I do not know what they put in those gels, but let me assure you, the human body is not designed to consume a dozen of these over a short amount of time.
Back to 2022.
It started to rain. I spotted a few people sat on the side of the road wrapped in foil blankets. It’s June. Summer. It really should be warmer as we ride through the commuter towns of Essex and into the outer suburbs of east London.
I start to enjoy it, but as I hit mile 80 I’d like it to end. Twenty miles is still a long way, off the back of 80. I’m lifted as we roll onto the North Circular, the Olympic velodrome on my left, as I ride along the four-lane road - a road I’ve only experienced nose-to-tale in a car. In many respects this was my favourite moment of the entire route.
Mile 90 passed and my legs are spent but the atmosphere is fantastic and the sight of the Thames on my left as we sweep down towards the Tower of London is both glorious and comforting. Finally, past St Catherines Dock and the left turn onto Tower Bridge where we are met with a wall of music and cheering with crowds packed either side of the bridge. I freewheel across the finish line in an effort to savour the moment.
I dismount and shuffle with fellow cyclists across the bridge as a marshal puts a medal around my neck. I hear someone explaining that if you complete the London Marathon, the RideLondon-Essex 100 and the 2-mile Serpentine Swim you get the coveted London Classics medal. I make a mental note to start swimming lessons.
After cycling back to Woodford - really could have done without that - I finally get home to Suffolk at 7pm. In total I cycled 141 miles. The 100 mile course took me 6h 21m and 25s.
If you want to take part in RideLondon-Essex in 2023 go to https://www.ridelondon.co.uk/