Every now and then it’s good to do something a little bit different. And last Sunday was certainly that for a group from my road club, London Dynamo.
I imagine most London cyclists are pretty excited about the 2012 Olympics, as are hopefully most Londoners. For those of us who train out to the south-west of London and into Surrey, though, the road race and time trial are particularly appealing, because they are run on our regular training routes.
On Sunday, a group of 15 or so of the club’s racing fraternity went out with a camera crew and reporter from ITV’s London news, to ride the course and give our reactions. The road race heads out from Buckingham Palace, out through Kensington, past Harrods, through our home turf of Richmond Park, on past Hampton Court Palace and into Surrey, to culminate in nine laps of Box Hill, a favourite climb for many a local rider.
It’s going to be an exciting race – the flat, broad streets of London give way eventually to the narrow lanes of Surrey and a good number of short sharp hills, not least of which is Box Hill, before haring 25 miles back to town to finish on the Mall.
We Brits will be crossing fingers that Cav can hang on up the hill or at least get back on during the run back into town, in order to sprint to glory at the finish. But there are going to be plenty of the Evanses, Gilberts and Sanchezes of this world wanting to rain on his parade. It’s going to be fascinating!
Talking of rain on the parade, our ride was rendered rather less pleasant for the arrival of heavy showers about 15 minutes after we finally set off riding. Disappointingly this caused a few feeble souls to bail out at Hampton Court and head home for an early bath. This did allow us to conduct conclusive research into the relative hardness of different Antipodean nations – NZ and RSA 1, Australia 0. Shame on you Roy! It also meant that the helmet cam gaffer-taped to my helmet was rendered rather less effective by rain all over the lens.
This was not, it has to be said, the most efficient possible use of a day training-wise, and therefore somewhat dubious preparation for my forthcoming ABSA Cape Epic efforts – for seven hours out of the house, we covered about 70 miles, once we’d done all the faffing, many stops, some waiting for the camera car to get through London traffic, and a few different shots on Box Hill. All for a little over two minutes’ footage.
Ah, the glamour of showbiz. But it was a lot of fun nonetheless, and certainly something a bit different. Plus we got our ugly mugs on TV…
Here’s the clip – our bit starts about 21 minutes in. (Our apologies to MarathonMTB.com (and Will Hayter!) fans outside the UK may find the clip geo-restricted – ed.).