You’d think with a comfortable bed, a reasonable ambient room temperature, peace, quiet, and a few pints of San Miguel, I’d have slept like a log, wouldn’t you?  Don’t be daft – as if!  *sigh*.  To be fair, this didn’t come as any great surprise, as it’s fairly typical for the night before a sportive.  It’s a Christmas Eve type thing.  I’m so worried I’ll miss the actual alarm clock and the big event that my inner alarm clock wakes me up on a fairly regular basis just to check I haven’t!  Well I hadn’t!  It finally went off at 5:00am, dragging me up from wherever I’d finally ended up, giving me 45 minutes to get my act together, pack everything up, and meet GB in the lobby.  Easy, considering how much I’d faffed the night before.  Kit on, bottles filled, bags packed, whilst having instant coffee, another Eat Natural bar, and a variety of pills…the breakfast of Queens ;).

On my first pigeon-toed trip downstairs, I stuffed all my bags in the boot of my little car, and hid them under blankets in an attempt at security.  By the time I made the trek up to the room and back down again in the lift with the bike, GB was waiting in the lobby.  After some unnecessary bill settling shenanigans, it was finally time to head off.  Which is where GB came into his own, as being familiar with the area he knew how to get where we were going.  Just as well, cos I was clueless!  The roads we were using might not have been closed, but at 5:45 am they were still pretty empty, apart from one eejot in a speeding Merc.   The nearer we got to the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park the more cyclists we came across doing the same as us, and then there were official signs, and then a steadily growing stream of us were following those same signs, as relevant to us, into the Olympic village start venue.

Which brings us to start times.  Now there’s a mystery.  Every rider was allocated a set of times – to arrive at the Park by, load into our pen by, and to actually start at. And then a colour and a wave.  Which for me meant 6:10, 6:34, 7:10, Blue wave L.  How they worked it out and with what goal I have no idea.  There were far faster cyclists than I starting both earlier and later.  Such things are clearly for far greater minds than mine too!  No-one I knew had the same time as anyone they knew.  GB wasn’t due to start for another hour, in Blue S, which means he sacrificed an hour’s sleep just to keep me company.  Such martyrdom, for which I am not unappreciative ;).   However the whole start thing was all really well organised.  Nowhere was heaving, the queues for the many, many toilets were perfectly tolerable.  Large lorries were collecting the official numbered, labelled, bags given to riders at registration, to carry belongings from the start to the finish, which neither of us were bothering with.  I’ve been at events with far fewer entrants that were far more chaotic, so I guess the system was working!

There wasn’t much to do before they started processing Wave L, so I did what I was told by the freakishly cheerful and persistent tannoy guy.  Bless him, he was trying very hard.  So.  Stand outside the pen for a while.  Pass through to the pen, having handed in your rider card to a marshall to prove you were in the right place at the right time.  Stand inside the pen for a while, where there were yet more toilets.  Eventually move along to the start line.  Stand by the start line for a while.  Finally it was our turn.  The same tannoy guy counted us down, the air horn went off, and we were on our way as scheduled, past the TV cameras, to roll our way out for the first couple of miles to the starting mat proper.  Various cyclists peeled off to stand by the side of the road and wait for their friends before we got to that point, pretty much the only way to sort things so that you could ride with your mates.  Having done enough standing around, this wasn’t for me.  Not to hang around and wait for people who’d probably be faster than me and leave me behind anyway! *grin*.  We’d agreed there was no point, and even starting an hour later there was every chance that GB would catch me!

Cycling through a city is a weird thing for me.  Especially London with closed roads, thought it is no doubt infinitely preferable to doing the same on open roads!  Cycling down dual carriageways.  Through tunnels where bikes are usually banned, like Limehouse.  Ignoring traffic lights completely.  All before the city has done much by way of waking up.  Fascinating.  Past the Gherkin, seeing the Shard, past the Tower of London.  And so on.  I’d have taken more photos but I was trying to concentrate on what I was doing!  There had been a lot of pre-event talk and worry about the sheer number of riders doing it and therefore on the road at one time, but it didn’t really work out like that at all.  I guess the pen/wave system logic, whatever it was, worked.  After the initial rolling out period even my wave spread out, and with the roads fully closed, there was plenty of room to get on with what needed to be done.  Paying attention was more for road furniture, pot holes, man hole covers, and that kind of urban hazard, than for other riders.  Apart from the odd fancy dress rider the majority turned out, at least around me all day, to be far more professional and well behaved than expected – which was a very pleasant surprise.

It all passed by so fast that it was tempting to slow down to try and appreciate it a little more.  Which wasn’t really going to happen as it was far too early in the day for dawdling.  Everyone was clearly enjoying the novelty of it all though, as landmark after landmark flew by.  Our first trip past Trafalgar Square gave a hint of what was to come at the end of the day, with spectators and photographers all over the place.  Tantalising…   Then we were heading out of London, through the posh streets of Knightsbridge that have probably never seen so many cyclists, and out along roads I’ve only ever driven down and that rarely.  Can you imagine an empty A4?  Surreal!  

Every junction was marshalled.  Every serious road obstacle  – such as traffic lights and road islands – had a marshal standing on it waving a yellow flag and blowing a whistle, albeit some more enthusiastically than others.  Big arrows pointed out that you should go round one side or the other…but that wasn’t always enough.  I can’t quite remember where, but as we came down a straight road that then had a wide 90 degree left turn, riders were spread out everywhere to take the corner and to take others on the corner…and one of those obstacles was right in the middle as we straightened up.  I made it around the corner fine, but behind me?  Not so good.  There was that horrible noise, the sound of panicked voices, and I looked behind me to see, a little way back,  a cyclist mid air and about to land on his/her left hand side.  I’m guessing that was a broken collarbone at least…  Happy Healing! 🙁

Carrying on, everyone was somewhat chastened and subdued for a little while.  I saw two other ambulance requiring accidents out there during the day which I guess, considering the number of people involved, wasn’t surprising, but I do hope they were all ok.  I wonder how many injuries there actually were on the day?  The early miles seem to tick by amazingly quickly.  By the time we reached the (well padded!) gates to Richmond Park we’d already done twenty miles.  Lots of my city cycling friends talk about it, I think it’s as close as they can easily get to countryside ;), and as a country gal I was starting to feel a little more at home now.  A bit like the small group of Kingston Wheelers who’d stopped to talk to family and friends, it being in their own backyard!  It was all fairly green and pleasant, with grass, trees, birds singing, all totally fenced off from us.  I wonder where all those metal barriers get stored in between times?  There must of been tens of thousands of them used today.

The other thing today’s ride had in abundance was stops.  Three Hub stops with everything – food, drink, mechanics and medics – and I think 7 Drink stops.  Every one of them was well, and repetitively, stocked, so you could go to any point of them to get what you wanted, eliminating the need to queue.  Every stop had portable toilets, and there were also portable toilets at random points along the route.  I didn’t stop at all of them – toilets or stops!  I did decide to stop at the first hub, because I fancied a brief stop, and I needed to stuff my gilet in the saddle bag.  As I turned left into the one way system to lead riders in, I had no clue where I was…and to discover that I was at Hampton Court was awesome, and if you didn’t stop, you missed out.  I’ve not had many food stops at royal palaces!  The toilets were fairly posh too ;).  I’ve no idea how they managed to keep all the toilets fairly clean and well provisioned everywhere all day, but they did – most impressive!

We headed out through Kingston, into the Surrey country side.  I wasn’t feeling that great.  There was a strong headwind.  It was getting warmer, I was probably paying for the less than orthodox race prep the night before, and the lack of sleep.  Actually I was starting to feel properly weird.  And it occurred to me that this might well be a sign of bonking to come…  Looking back I’ve not been eating properly of late, hadn’t eaten right the day before, and hadn’t eaten much so far.  Well eating dry, though safe, fruit bars when it’s hot is nigh on impossible, though I had tried.  When I engaged brain, I realised I was also an hour overdue for the next dose of pills – talk about a less than ideal cocktail!  Time for a gel methinks!  And a little while taking it a little easier until I’d had chance to settle down somewhat.  It wasn’t long before the next hub where I made sure to drink, top up my bottles, and eat banana too – way easier than bars :).

Think of this as a ride of three thirds.  A flat third, a lumpy third, and a flat third.  The middle lumpy bit has three Surrey Hills.  Newlands Hill, Leith Hill and Box Hill, in that order.  It was almost a relief to go up for a change though it took quite a while to get into my rhythm and I did momentarily worry that I wasn’t going to…but I did.  Unlike some, for whom Shanks Pony was almost instantly the option of choice.  Newlands was ok, Box Hill held no fear for me as I’ve done it twice before and (not to disparage it but…) it’s pretty easy.  I was a little worried about Leith Hill but although it was hard work, being steeper than the other two, it was doable.  Having said that, I swear the guy behind me was about to expire, judging from the noises he was making!  I felt a tad guilty for not suffering likewise!  Thanks to the way the riders had spaced out, although there was traffic there wasn’t enough to get in the way.  Walkers kept out of the way, show-offs hurtled up on the outside and the rest of us plodded up as necessary in the space left in between.

The great thing about ups is the downs of course, and there were some crackers today, especially when you can go down ’em any way you want, past as many people as you want, without meeting anything coming the other way.  Faster than a speeding bullet ;).  Ignoring Strava, because 62mph is ridiculous, Garmin reckon my max speed was 47mph.  That I can believe :).  I knew that this wasn’t a hard ride, per se, so I felt justified in going fast in when I could, and there’s no better way to gain some momentum to maintain right?  Even though I would have liked to go downhill all day, I was still kinda looking forward to Box Hill.  It’s pretty, it wiggles, it’s iconic.  I like it in the same way I like Porlock toll road.  My kind of hill :).

And I enjoyed it.  Really!  I pootled and actually found it pretty easy, and I certainly wasn’t pushing it.  No point with all the other riders around, the views to enjoy, and plenty of photo opportunities to be taken.  Both by me, and of us no doubt.  I’ve given up smiling for photographers mostly, unless it’s Phil, because if I bought a photo for every sportive I’ve done I could wallpaper the downstairs loo at the very least.  Actually it turns out that he was out on Newlands Corner and if I’d known…see how serious I look? 😉

Right.  Some more downhill, yippeeee………a kick up, and time to head for home.  I stopped at the next drink stop to top up, it being important to keep hydrated when it’s hot.  Plus I gather you’re supposed to wash down gels with fluid, and since I was taking one every hour at least, I needed that too.  They seemed to be doing the trick though, keeping the bonk at bay.  It was time to put my head down and allez allez!  30 or so fairly flat miles ahead, with wide open roads, the kind of riding I can do, and a sneaky feeling that if I pushed it maybe I could make it back in under 6 hours ride time.  Ooh, a goal….!

So I hurtled.  I overtook.  I pushed.  I tailgated, wheelsucked, hitched rides.  I took the racing line, went the “wrong” side of road furniture, and generally had a blast.  No time for photos, time for having fun.  It was hard work, but oddly enjoyable.  Plenty of spectator support along the way helped keep morale and momentum up all day, especially now, although there was a noticeable drop in their enthusiasm as we got back into London.  City folk are clearly too cool for school ;).  There were are few minor climbs that my legs still didn’t like, but they didn’t last long, and it was always back to the fun bit.  The sprint for home.  Well why would you pootle in?  I felt proper pro racing my way through busy towns, with all the supporters, stopping for no-one and nothing, the bit well and truly between by teeth.  Especially I was overtaking people rather than vice versa for a change – I felt fast even if by the standards of my usual peers I wasn’t really!  Ooh, a girl could get a taste for this :D.

Before I knew it we were back in landmark central.  Battersea, Westminster, up Whitehall again, a sharp left to go under Admiralty Arch, and then finally we were riding down The Mall to the sound of hordes of spectators banging on the hoardings and cheering.  Time for a gratuitous sprint finish no?  Of course!  Shame not everyone felt the same way, the guy next to me and I had to slow down a little just before the finish line, but it was with a wry grin rather than any real sense of disappointment.  Now that was fun!  And according to my Garmin, my ride time was 5:42 with an average of 17.9mph.  Yee haw, go me! 😀

As we met up in dribs and drabs later, it turned out that Chris, having been there for hours, had seen the riders and their times going up on screen as they came over the finish line, and my official time was 5:58 – so I was sub 6 hours in lots of ways.  I am still so chuffed with that.  I’m also pleased to have not been that much slower than a whole heap of other people who usually kick my arse ;).  All the worrying beforehand turns out to have been completely unwarranted.  This was a superbly run event, and thanks to the weather, the nature of the course, and the organisation, I had a seriously good day at the office!

Cycling time: 5:42 hrs.
Official time: 5:58 hrs – 626 out of 2900 women!
Distance: 102.5 miles.
Avs: 17.9 mph.

If you’re a cyclist and haven’t heard of Prudential Ride London by now, then where the bejesus have you been?  Around 20,000 of us were actually there for starters!  I was going to say that I don’t know how I got a place but I think that’s probably disingenuous of me.  Let’s be honest, whatever arcane formula they were applying to allocate places was heavily weighted in favour of women.  According to the results list, there were 14793 men, and 4414 women.  Since the usual female turnout for a sportive is around 3-5%, there’s no way that happened naturally.  Is positive discrimination a good thing?  Discuss.  Or don’t.  Pretty much everyone I know who ended up doing the ride did it on a charity ticket.  Hardly anyone seems to have gotten a place in the ballot…and I did.  Which came as a bit of a shock when the places were given out since I’d pretty much forgotten I’d entered!  Still, not complaining, right?

Having said that, if I’d realised how complicated it was going to be, I might have had second thoughts…  For starters, it doesn’t start and finish in the same place, it’s in London (no, really?), and you can’t register on the day.  It turned out that GB was doing it too, for Macmillan, for reasons that are obvious if you know him.  Except he was going to be on holiday in Crete (or somewhere similar) the week before and not due back until late the Saturday night.  So in equitable stylee, he sorted accommodation and some route details, and I agreed to register him as well as myself on the Saturday.  This added whole new degrees of stress to the pre-event faffing and prepping process however.  After all, if I f*cked it up somehow, I wasn’t just screwing my day but his too.  No pressure!  And I was having a massive country mouse moment about hitting the big city.  Sad, but true.

So I was more than a little apprehensive when I set off on Saturday, not least because I was about to spend hours on the motorway, which has been a little problematic of late.  I’d left myself plenty of time, and leeway, and contingency, but even so, if I ended up needing a nap, if there was traffic problems, if I got lost in London…the possibilities were endless.  And registration closed at 5.00pm!  Aargh..!

Step one.  The drive.  I stopped at Membury services for a comfort stop, and the car park was full of cyclists and cars with bikes on/in.  Considering we were all heading to the same place for the same reason, converging like bees to a hive, there didn’t seem any way life couldn’t just get busier and more stressful!  However amazingly the roads were flowing fairly well.  I don’t know how I coped before sat navs when going places on my own, because looking at paper printouts going around London whilst also trying to drive would have been a nightmare.  Let’s face it, I may have a very good sense of direction (I do), but my geography is shocking (it’s a running family joke) and I had no real sense of where I was going. Other than West.  More specifically West Ham.  Quite literally.  As in West Ham United Hotel.  GB is a Hammers fan (I presume somebody has to be) and had booked rooms there, as it’s only two miles from ExCel where registration and the start were.  I was, as might have been predicted, half an hour early for the 2pm check in, and had to hang out in the car park for a bit before I could get safely installed.  Still, that’s what works for me, I’d far rather be early than late!  Once checked in, I don’t know what I was expecting, but a room with a view of the pitch wasn’t it!  Actually, I’d been so busy of late, and it’s the school summer holidays, and I really hadn’t given much thought to the whole weekend until about Thursday!

Right, baggage deposited.  Me freshened up. Bike safely rebuilt and tucked up in bed.  Well, bedroom 😉  Time for me and my new, retail therapy induced, frock to head off to ExCel in the sunshine.  Using public transport, which is something us country mice are somewhat unaccustomed to doing, what with it barely existing out here in the sticks.  Thanks to various apps and websites, I’d kinda figured out what I had to do, and the receptionist told me which way to walk to get to Upton Park station, which was a good start.  It’s probably not the politically correct thing to say, but I was very glad of my reflective sunglasses on the way  It’s safe to say I was the ethnic minority and I felt more than a little fish out of water.  I hid behind my lenses, did my best to walk tall for the five minutes it took to get to the station, and found myself the right train to get to West Ham, and from there to get the DLR to ExCel. By the time I was on the DLR, I was once more among friends.  Well, among cyclists anyway.  With giveaway accessories, conversation, tan lines and so forth.  I myself was sporting my mighty fine birthday Rapha musette bag – it being lighter and easier to carry than my usual handbag.  I didn’t want to be carrying lots of stuff as I wasn’t sure how much stuff I’d get given once there – times two!

As it turns out Roger, of goats’ cheese fame, texted me as he was already there, and we agreed to meet, and for him to show me the ropes, as it were.  Him telling me he was standing near the front doors with a blue top on was a little less than constructive though…blue tops were far from unique!  Still, he found me, which is just as well as I was about to call him and point this out ;).  He very kindly showed me the way through the whole registration process.  Which, considering the numbers of people being dealt with, was remarkably easy and queue free.  I handed over my paperwork, showed my passport, and was given my entry pack.  I then did the same for GB, albeit with a photocopy of his passport and a letter of authorisation, and I had to show them my number too!  A completely unnecessary palaver.  Let’s face it, the only reason they don’t send out your entry pack, which would be far simpler, is to make sure you attend the associated cycle show.  Which was great for free nutrition samples (no use to me), for last minute bits and souvenir items, and was heavy on the charity stand front, but really didn’t hold enough to grab my attention for more than 15 minutes or so.  The only upside was talking to the Garmin guys and getting a phone number to call for product support who might be able to get me a new usb port cover for my Edge 500, which disappeared a few rides back.

Roger headed off, and I decided to grab a coffee and kill some time.  The twitterverse did not yield company, but somewhat surprisingly I got a text from Figgy Chris as he was there, so he joined me for a bit which was nice, as I was feeling a tad at a loss as to what to do with myself.  Still, even he had to go, and I had to admit I’d run out of things to do.  I debated my options, but the idea of more hanging around on my own, or indeed trekking across London on my own to meet others (sorry Pixie) were both unappetising so I decided to head back to the hotel and take it from there.  Back to hiding behind the sunglasses…  I really wanted to buy some bananas from the market on the way back but I had to own up to being too shy/scared to, so I didn’t.  How tragic is that?!  Hey, I’m not quite as hard as nails as you might think! 😉

As I chilled out in my room, a little wiped out from all the travelling and worried that I might have overdone it, I checked out the hotel menu, and realised that an omelette was only going to set me me back £5.50.  Cheap as the chips it came with ;).  I set up everything for the next day to pass the time until food could be served.  Numbers on…the front of the bike, the bike frame, the back of my jersey.  I passed on the only non-mandatory one, for the helmet – it was only really for photo identification purposes and I rarely buy those anyway.  A little overkill methinks!  So, kit laid out, bike checked over, gadgets installed, everything as ready as it could be.  Time to go install myself in the air conditioned bar, and drink something cold.  Which in this case meant San Miguel, which at £4.10 a pint was scarily expensive and nearly as pricey as the not at all bad bacon omelette I did indeed order.  However that wasn’t until the second pint ;).  Well if the Magnificat could be Stella powered, I figured Prudential Ride London might as well be likewise fuelled.  I read my Kindle, drank my lager, ate my food, and passed a few hours.  By the time GB finally arrived sometime after 9:00pm I’d even found a few fellow cyclist souls to chat too.  A group from Swindon RC, and a couple of ladies from the Chilterns.  Their levels of experience varied wildly and I have to admit to having been a bit cagey about mine…  People tend to presume that if I’ve done a lot of sportives I must be good at them, whereas all it really means is that I’ve done a lot of sportives!

Time passed, and they headed off to their various rooms.  Once GB had tucked his baby into his bed(room) he joined me in the lounge,  He ate unattractive looking cold supermarket pasta and I had another pint, which made it…well, enough pints, and we went through details for the following morning.  Being as organised as we were ever going to be, it was time to head for my room, for a little more faffing, decaf coffee, an Eat Natural bar in lieu of my usual pre-event porridge, and a little more daft tweeting before finally trying to get some sleep.  You can guess how well that went…but that’s a story for another day :).