RideLondon with ŠKODA
I’ve just got back from a week in Iceland racing mountain bikes which was just the most amazing experience in so many ways. I can’t wait to tell you more about what I got up to over there and to begin editing together my footage from the trip, but first things first, let’s talk about RideLondon.
Right before I headed out to Reykjavik for Glacier 360 (a three day mountain bike stage race) I went up to the capital to meet up with the guys from ŠKODA and my fellow ŠKODA Cycling ambassadors Bradley Wiggins and Hannah Barnes as well as to participate in RideLondon – Surrey 100.
Set up as a legacy of the London 2012 Olympics, Prudential RideLondon is a weekend of cycling events encompassing two UCI world tour races, the Classique and the Classic, the Freecycle and the RideLondon – Surrey 100 which is what I was riding. Despite being only a few years old, the RideLondon – Surrey 100 is an enormously popular closed road cycle sportive that sees upward of 25,00 cyclists riding a loop through London and the Surrey hills loosely based on the route of the 2012 Olympic road race.
Riding 100 miles is not actually something Ido that often – most of the races I compete in involved, sometimes all-out max efforts and are frequently no longer than a hour in total. But with a few endurance events in the calendar this year over the summer I’ve been trying, where possible, to include longer rides in my training schedule rather than focusing exclusively on the shorter high intensity sessions that I use to train for circuit races such as fixed gear criterium.
With interval training, I sometimes just want to get my ride over with as I’m riding at such a high heart rate or power that it’s not in any way pleasurable. But as the endurance blocks are ridden at a much lower intensity than my race training sessions, I’ve been finding them really enjoyable and beneficial in terms of mental wellbeing. Physically, the extra hours on the bike are paying off too, so wanting to test out my pacing strategy for endurance events, I was intrigued to see how I’d feel over the course of the RideLondon – Surrey 100.
Check out a video of my weekend to find out how I got on.
After the the ride I headed up to the ŠKODA stand in Green Park for the three way interview that you can see a tiny glimpse of at the end of my video. It was such fun to hang out with Wiggo and Hannah, answer questions and meet some cute kids who were autograph hunting. So if you want to know the answer to gems such as ‘How do you combat helmet hair?’ and ‘What do you think about cycling hipsters?’ check out the video below:
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