Registered on Saturday afternoon for the Sunday event, found out
Wiggle had only brought enough official jerseys for the number of participants, and had apparently sold out on Friday...
Ended up buying a Gran Fondo New York jersey a) to quell my need to buy something, and b) it had 2 very useful pockets at the side making 5 in total - useful!
Set up the stickers and chip to outfit and bike and settled down for the night.
Had a 7.39am start so woke up around 5am and watched some early riders making their way to their pens...
Then making my way down to the entry point for Orange and Blue waves where the trucks were waiting for bag drop offs.
And continued towards where my start would be.
I somehow ended up going 20 yards to the right here for some reason, until I realised I was surrounded by blues...it's not like the sign was big enough...
Still can't believe West Ham will be playing here soon..
Still walking and waiting for the waves to go thru...
We got a nice celebratory flyover...
And the songs that kept changing suddenly switched to Neil Diamond's Sweet Caroline, which was strange as I'd been humming that tune for no reason whatsoever all day Saturday in the car. Kinda freaked me out to the point I forgot how iphone video cameras work...
Nearly there....
And off we went. My target was a sub 6 hour time. Last time in 2013 I had done it in an official time of 6hrs 35 mins, with 6hrs 05mins cycling time. I thought I could knock a big chunk of that off with more efficient choices in where to stop.
Started really well, an average of around 20mph or so hiding behind the wheels of two Wheelers and a RideLondon official jersey cyclist (gritted my teeth at Wiggle).
Saw first incident at the top of a bridge where a girl was being treated with a fellow female cyclist with her, looked just like a scrape, nothing too serious.
Richmond Park was lovely and sunny, Sawyers Hill was its usual windy self.
Kingston was noisy and fun, and then thru to Hampton Court and the first HUB which in 2013 was a nice and easy get in/get out situation. This time it was in a field, requiring you to walk with the bike the whole length to get out. Topped up bottle, did my business and a slow walk out still took 13 minutes. D'oh.
The dull section to Walton seemed to pass by quite quick, and I used to roads all the way to Pyrford to eat as much as possible. So 2 bananas, 3 Nakd bars and lots of water intake and then it was the hills!
Newlands passed by with no issue, wasn't particularly fast, wasn't slow, then the downhill I took slower than I usually do as I had some clearly nervous riders to the front and side of me, so the nice flowing downhill was a bit wasted, but safely navigated by all.
Gave it some between Abinger and Forest Green where I stopped at the water break, which again took longer than I expected as bike stands were limited and it all seemed a little crazy, certainly all the stops seemed less spread out as they had been in 2013. Another 7 minutes lost here.
I got a little confused where we actually were here, and hit the big ramp prior to Leith Hill thinking it was the ramp up to the Forest Green turn off, so when we took a sharp left and went onto Leith Hill I was a little surprised.
Then I saw people indicating slow down, and cyclists dismounting, which I did too, then heard people shouting for any medics to come, and saw a pair of legs on the ground, the gentleman on his back. I took the bike a good way around the group there and carried on. Of course later you find the tragic news about the person (a Mr Stephen Green) who died of a cardiac arrest while cycling for a children's charity 'Action for A-T'
Stephen's Charity Page. So so sad, on a day of celebration and fun.
Took a breather at the top of Leith Hill (where I heard the sad news from a marshall)
20 IMG limit so split into two...
