Ride London Essex 100 – 2024

I’ve wanted to do this ride for a few years but I’ve been focused on trying to get my Marathon Majors and haven’t been on the bike much.

Just after the London Marathon in April I got a final invite email and thought, why not! Can’t be that hard, famous last words obviously.

I dug my bike out and gave it some much needed TLC and managed to get a few (I mean three!) rides done before the event as some cross training mixed in with my marathon plan. Felt alright on the bike after being absent for so long and estimated that I could possibly manage a sub 6 hour ride. So that was my target, plucked from thin air, but something to air for.

The Great British weather obliged and we had rain forecast all day. In the end the start was damp and we only had one down pour at around 85 miles in.

A great event, well organised, lots of support on route and a pleasure to have closed roads the whole way. Was truly a buzz hitting 30 mph in the draft on the right hand side ofd the road with hundreds of others. Adrenaline rush that’s for sure.

So I pushed hard to half way, stopped at the welfare at 53 miles to free up my toes. They had gone a little numb in the cold. Realised at the end that I should have eaten more substantially at this point. Lesson learnt for next time.

After bonking at 98 miles and force feeding myself I crossed the line in 5 hours and 47 minutes. Over the moon to have broken the 6 hour target with little time in the saddle before hand.

Was a great day and we were greeted by beautiful sunshine at the end to top it off.

If you want a ride to see the sights of London, this is not it. If you want a ride to draft in packs and experience high speeds with less effort over beautiful rolling scenery, then this is for you.

Already signed up for next year, great excuse to buy a new bike I think!

00:00 Intro
01:05 The Start
01:49 Limehouse Link Tunnel
03:44 25 Mile Welfare Stop
04:33 53 Mile Welfare Stop
05:33 Back on the road
06:38 Down came the rain
06:47 Near miss
07:41 And the Sun appeared
08:17 80 miles and tired
09:14 London City in sight
09:56 The Millenium Dome
11:06 Need to fuel better
12:00 The last push
12:53 The final turn
13:29 What a view
13:44 Finish line in sight
15:07 Medal time
15:27 Picture time
15:52 Snack time
16:08 The end

with the weather being as predicted it was fairly damp lots of water on the road but this is my first ride London so let’s go a [Music] 100 glorious miles [Music] [Music] right 100 glor St [Music] [Music] [Music] I one of the main things about ride London is You Don’t See Much of London this is the last Landmark Canary Warf as we head out to spend most of the time in Essex [Music] this was the first welfare stop at 25 miles uh I was feeling pretty good so couldn’t see any reason to stop didn’t need to L didn’t need to eat I was eating on the go with my gels and such taking on plenty of water I had two very large bottles on the bike so I was good to go again well organized lots of toilets um lots of food stops the high five tents giving out free bars and Gils Etc so all you could need really uh if only the sun would come out [Music] before I know it I’m at halfway 53 mi in and at the welfare stop to stretch my legs and get a bit of numbness out of my toes haven’t been on the bike for some time and it’s certainly showing so this is a a big welfare stop I think most people stop at halfway to get water um and other snacks and eat the one challenge you have here is that you have to Rack your bike so you can’t go into pick get water or food or anything else uh without racking your bike and there’s signs clearly visible saying bikes left at owner’s risk which doesn’t fool you full of confidence unfortunately uh particularly when you got bikes there are like you know 10 to 12K a pot um you don’t really want someone wandering off with your bike while you’re getting water so I chose to just stay with my bike not that my bike is worth 12 Grand uh just to eat and as I say stretch my toes and and get a bit of feeling back had some food drunk plenty of water i’ brought enough for the whole routee to be fair particularly on a wet day today where it wasn’t that warm and yeah got back into the saddle and joined the group and got on with the rest hoping to uh to get it knocked out as quick as I’d done the first half [Music] e [Music] a [Music] oh a [Music] 80 mil done 20 to go I’ve not ridden this kind of distance for years it’s safe to say and in my training cuz I’m running mostly at the moment I’ve only done three rides maybe Max sort of an hour and a half uh so yeah at this point my hamstrings are screaming and my legs are getting heavy 20 mi doesn’t seem like that far to go does it [Music] oh [Music] [Applause] oh [Music] [Music] he [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] he [Music] three miles to go and it’s pretty clear that I haven’t nailed my fueling and likee these poor people you can see here walking I realized that if I don’t stop and eat something very soon particularly with some salt in I’m probably going to collapse and that wouldn’t be good obviously so it is pretty much at this point that I die so I let this nice person passed and I climb onto the curb just to be away from traffic so I don’t cause any [Applause] issues the faint sound of my head bumping against the wall as I barely clicked to Consciousness i w for a bit try to get my composure and get some strength back grabbed some salts and I think I had an Oat Bar left so I smashed that as fast as I could drunk some water water to wash it down by this time I’m getting very tired it’s quite hard to eat I really struggle at longterm long endurance things to eat once I’ve done anything more than 2 hours exercise I don’t know why it’s just how I’m made so I’ve definitely got to work on my fueling strategy for anything else I do in the future so my advice to all of you eat plenty at the halfway stop eat more than you think you need um I wish I’d done that so but anyway nearly there [Music] the turn we’ve all been waiting for the lovely sight of towerbridge and the ter of London and the city I mean this is what we’ve been waiting for what we’ve just ridden 100 miles to see and boy is it a site for zor eyes [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] finish lineing sight now nothing left to give legs are spent absolutely thoroughly enjoyed every mini of it today if you’ve never done it before I thoroughly recommend it don’t worry about the weather you deal with that that’s the way it goes right but boy was it worth the effort loved it [Music] n [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] done [Music] B what guys baby [Music] [Music] got you [Music] [Music]