Obviously I haven’t been properly training for the last 2 weeks as I was in holidays in France, but within a month to go before the start of my trip, I thought it was time to step up despite the lack of recent training. So this morning I decided to head to the coast where I would need to board the ferry, Hewhaven (near Brighton).
Departure few minutes after 8 this morning, this training was also the occasion to scape the route from London to Newhaven. I prepared it again last night and honestly everything was alright today, I didn’t get lost and I don’t think I rode extra miles. Just had this little segment of A23 at 10miles of Newhaven where the cars were driving fast, it was a bit scarry! So I’m satisfied with this, I know the route now.
However to be honest I wasn’t expecting this level of difficulty. You could think England is flat, but this part isn’t. Either in London, from Brixton to the M23 cut it’s all about climbing. After that, there are a lot of hills to climb, no flat, and short parts to recover. The route is exhausting then, I also get a good piece of a rain as well as some strong wind while arriving near to Newhaven. It was a very hard training. I haven’t seen a lot of other cyclists too, surprisingly.
I took me 4h30 and I rode 70 miles (110km) to Newhaven. Then I caught a train there to London Victoria (1h25) and rode back home to add an extra 6kms. However it took me ages as I had to walk a lot due to the olympics road race restrictions and I forget to switch of my computer so my average and total trip time are a bit distorted.
Otherwise, I was feeling very weak and tired when I arrived in Newhaven, but I was feeling better after the train back home.
A month to go before the beginning, so this is the last straight!
Total Trip: 72.32 miles // 116 km
Total Time: 4h 59min
Average Speed: 14.45mph // 23.26kmh
Max Speed: 35mph // 57kmh
