PGT Days 13 to 16 - Real Peloton to Real Gone Summer

Another catch up blog, four days of People's Grand Touring to report on, so here goes;

PGT Day 13 started early, 4.30am, with a quick bite of breakfast before heading out of the door at 5am bound for Greenwich Park in London. It didn't come as a great shock to me that driving the last twenty miles took me 15 minutes longer than the first hundred and twenty had, but I still passed through Blackheath Gate over an ahead of the meeting time. The purpose of my journey was to join old friends and new acquaintances on the third annual Team Real Peloton bike ride, an event first started in 2010 when Ned Boulting and Matt Rendell invited listeners to their irreverent cycling podcast, Real Peloton, to join them on the Devon Tour Ride, a 110 miles bicycle odyssey through the rolling hilly southwest. That event started on a rainy September morning under heavy, grey skies and the wet roads took their toll when Joad, one of our number of around 20 hardy souls, crashed en route to the start line and had to retire. After numerous mishaps and adventures we finished in a warm, dry - if not exactly sunny - Teignmouth.

As most roadies know, friendships forged on the road prevail and so it was that on June 16th 2011 we assembled for the second annual Team Real Peloton Ride. The plan was to ride much of the Olympic Road Race course, especially including Box Hill, and thereafter to take in the final round of the Tour Series in Canary Wharf. That plan didn't include apocalyptic rainfall sufficient to submerging the car park in Richmond Park and to leave us wondering whether to ride or go and build an Ark. But ride we did, a few new faces mingling with a few Devon vets, and great fun we had - I can still laugh out loud when recalling the vile verbal abuse that Mr Rendell suffered from the puffy chops of an XXXL Anne Summers rep in Dorking.

And so we come to the 31st May 2012. Conspiracies of circumstance meant that we were merely 6 today. Matt was sadly unavailable (happily for him though as he was in Italy) and I can only assume that a lack of Real Peloton podcasts in 2012 had caused a dwindling of interest in Team Real Peloton. Hence our third annual ride began with just four vets - myself, Luke McLaughlin (ITV webmaster and everyday commuting cyclist) Ned and Jim Clayton (once the subject of much abuse from Boulting and Rendell for briefly pulling out of the 2010 Tour Ride team) - and 2 new "members", Ian Cleverly of Rouleur and Chris Alfreds from IG Markets. With Ian and Luke as two legged sat navs we negotiated our way out of Greenwich Park and into the Kent countryside in almost perfect cycling weather, warm, dry and a a little overcast. I can easily understand the "Garden of England" tag that the county has, it's beautiful and some of the roads are a joy. Finding fresh new tarmac on lanes where two cars struggle to pass each other was a delightful surprise, and the bunting clad villages of middle England felt a world away from the nearby metropolis. As expected the company was wonderful and relaxed, and when Ned, Jim and I arrived back at Blackheath Gate neither my mind NOR my legs felt like we'd ridden four hours and fifty miles - my first 50 in one go post bowel cancer. This I took as a sign of great enjoyment and (finally) a welcome return to full cycling fitness. Most shocking of all was that we experienced not one drop of rain or inclement weather on the entire journey, meaning that Matt Rendell, Jon Stump or one of the other two time RP riders is our Albatross killer!

After a welcome freshen up at Ned's we headed to Canary Wharf for the Tour Series race where this time Jim took control of navigation duties through the shiny shopping centre and glassy gorges they call streets. Although we had seen little sun during our earlier ride Chris was sporting some impressively red arms, and when he's had enough of working for IG Markets he can probably carve out a top level career in the World Speed Sun Burning League. Below is the elevation profile of our ride which looks ego satisfyingly like a Grand Tour mountain stage.

Thanks Jim, Ned, Luke, Chris and Ian for a lovely day out.

I thought that PGT Day 14 would be a toughie, but in fact I felt great throughout Friday 1st of June with my lungs and legs feeling superb. Sadly I wasn't able to repeat the mileage of yesterday but I still had a joyous day of litle local loops (including the obligatory Club Day trip to Fred's where I got a new team tee shirt).

PGT Day 15 was as awful as day's 13 and 14 were great. I read an interview with Ryan Giggs a few months ago in which he said how he could feel a deterioration in performance at training if he put butter on his toast. For the past few weeks I've been noticing clear links between what I eat on one day and how I feel cycling on the next. We are, after all, what we eat. In my case what I eat too much of is sweet things. So on the evening of Friday June 1st I succumbed to too much cake and sweets (sweet liquorice stuffed with Flake like chocolate - how can one resist?) at a nephew's 21st Birthday tea, then to too much junky snacky foods at a friend's sixtieth birthday party. On the morning of Saturday June 2nd I headed over to my sister's house in Wollaston (route detailed here in my PGT 1 day 5 blog post) to drop off my Oyster card (she's snagged tickets to the Jubilee Concert at Buck Pal) and, to be blunt, felt crap. The return journey was better, the wind was behind me for one thing, but I never once felt great and my breathing was awful going from fine to breathless in record times again and again. In the end I was glad that it was a short ride day and I am now absolutely certain that if I'm riding far I must eat well for a day or two before and stay off the cake and chocolate.

The temperature plummeted back down to 7° today, for PGT Day 16, and was accompanied by steady rain and strong wind. Thus it was that I suffered through a short ride for the second day running, this time along the regular Tuck Hill/ Six Ashes route (detailed here), only today the wind was behind me heading outward meaning much grunting and grinding on the homeward half of the ride. In fact the weather was so poor it felt like THIS should be the 2012 Team Real Peloton outing, not the dry run in The Smoke on Thursday, and so to acknowledge this I wore my Real Peloton jersey, but once again I was glad to get home, drink coffee and shower. Fingers crossed that the forecast for the rest of the week is largely wrong, but if not then it looks like a few days of riding with mudguards.



Day 13
Day 14
Day 15
Day 16