It’s nice to go back to Wasdale Head and have their delicious local ales they made in-house usually named after the mountains nearby.
It’s even nicer when you rode all the way on an old bicycle after several hours worth of riding, the pints taste somehow lovelier.
I don’t want to stop riding.
I can never get used to the lifeless faces I see when I took the train every once in a blue moon, especially during the morning rush hour commute, the worse aspect of it is that it’s a mere choice to live and work that far apart.
I realised how much I truly enjoyed my commute by riding my bicycle everyday, I suppose it’s one of those rare commute that you want to look forward to every morning and evening.
1 hour, 4 minutes and 50 second.
That the overall time of the 3 laps challenge at Richmond Park covering a smug over 20 miles.
The challenge is very much an unofficial challenge mated by the fact that’s apparently illegal for even bicyclists to go over the 20mph limit (such rules are applied to motorised vehicles), it’s a popular time trial challenge in London with a good distance, right amount of ascent/descent, some long flat and of course the cafe by the roundabout make a good checkpoint.
There’s a reason to why I’ve done that on the most unacceptable bicycle to do the challenge in; simply as a challenge, the Brompton is a folding bicycle designed for.. well, transportation, it flex like a mother, the tribar made it even more unstable until I pass the 15mph barrier, the saddle is too low as the seatpost as it’s maximum insertation point, and of course the gearing is pretty high married by the small wheel which make climbing not quite a joy to work on.
I am the sort of person whom strongly believe it all to be in my mind, not my body, Jill Homer, a personal heroine of me, described it perfectly in her recent blog;
…I started to wonder if I had dug a hole I wouldn’t be able to crawl out of before Nepal, but in the same breath, I wasn’t really that concerned. There was no acute strain, and no pain — just peaceful, almost blissful fatigue. Evolution gave us all the ability to walk for five days straight, and modern culture gave us the ability to choose not to. The more I experiment with endurance sports, the more I believe endurance is a matter of choices more than physical abilities or exceptional talent.
I rode the Brompton knowing it won’t be as comfortable, easy or even trustworthy as my old 12 speed road bike, but it made me push harder to overcome that limitation, my estimation was 1 hour, 10 minutes, and I managed to shave 5 minutes off that time.
I correlation the data of my stopwatch and the phone gps tracker that give me the time, let see how I flare on a normal bicycle next time.
Each checkpoint represent the place we stay the night until we reach Cumbria.
