Psychogeography, traffic lights and sweat

An auspicious week – my review of three books about London cycle couriers can be seen in the travel section (page 28) of the latest edition of the Times Literary Supplement.

Here’s the link:

http://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/public/you-wear-the-city/

Nightrider

At eleven o’clock on a Saturday night, I was cycling to Alexandra Palace. So, it seemed, were a lot of other people. I, and several thousand others, had signed up to take part in London Nightrider 2013, a nocturnal 100-kilometre (or, if you prefer, just over 62 mile) bike ride through London.

Allison’s main concern had been the prospect of my getting hit by a bus. After registering and spending over five minutes pinning my number to my free high-vis tabard, I got chatting with one of my fellow-participants, a girl whose bike was equipped with a soft-toy sheep and more lights than a Christmas tree. She also had a digital speedometer attached to the one part of her handlebars that didn’t have a light fitted to it; for measuring speed and distance travelled, I preferred to rely on a recently-downloaded app on my BlackBerry which worked out where I was using GPS. Classy.

We discussed how we’d prepared for Nightrider, and how we felt now we were at the start.

“When I got off the train at Euston, I really wasn’t sure if I wanted to do this,” she said.

Train?

“I’ve come down from Kidderminster for this.”

I decided not to mention the fact that one of the reasons I’d chosen this particular bike ride was because the start-and-finish point was an easy fifteen-minute ride from where I live.

I’d signed up for Nightrider because I wanted to do a long-distance cycling event and did not want to do the London-Brighton ride (my reasons were twofold; firstly, I didn’t fancy my chances on Ditchling Beacon, and secondly, I didn’t want to have to deal with the logistical problem of getting my bike back to London on the train at the same time as thousands of other people). I’d be doing this for charity – specifically, the Marie Curie Cancer Trust.

Rudimentary bike maintenance aside, my preparation had consisted of a series of rides of gradually increasing distance in the evenings after work, cumulating in an 11-mile route the day before. Now, I’d have to do a little bit more than that just to get to the first rest-stop, and then repeat the procedure four times in order to finish.

At 11:25, we and a couple of hundred other cyclists made our way to the start line. Hitting a bus? I was more worried about hitting another cyclist. The road down from Ally Pally was full of people apologising as they inadvertently cut each other up and came within inches of ensuring that at least three bikes hit the deck. Amazingly, we all emerged unscathed.

Straightaway, our peloton hit a hill. Specifically, it was a narrow residential street leading to Highgate Station, from which we took another hill up to Highgate Village. This, as those of us who’d read the blurb about the route could say, was the steepest climb of the ride. Not that that was any consolation to us at the time. But at least it broke up the peloton and meant that I didn’t have to worry about knocking anyone over.

From thereon, we rode up to Whitestone Pond above Hampstead (the highest point in Greater London), and then down into Central London. Landmarks came thick and fast – Lord’s, the American Embassy, the Ritz, Piccadilly Circus, Canada House, the Embankment – as we rode through Westminster to the River, and then across to our first break-stop at the Imperial War Museum.

A coffee and a Mars bar later, I was back across the River, riding as fast as I could down Whitehall and then though a maze of Pimlico back-streets before heading south again, past the MI6 building and the Oval and in the general direction of Crystal Palace. On this section a group of us were harassed by a lairy idiot in a bright-orange Lamborghini who shouted abuse, revved his engine, sped off and then drove around the block so he could have another go. Discussing him at a later break-stop, one fellow-cyclist said he wished he’d brought his warrant card with him! Pedestrians, passengers in taxis and other drivers shouted nothing but encouragement, I am pleased to report.

The second stop was Crystal Palace Park, located just below the giant TV mast; you can see it from Ally Pally on a clear day, on the horizon. Lambo Man aside, the second leg of the ride was OK until the steep climb at the end. Some people got off and walked this part, but I soldiered on at a snail’s pace. A natural hill-climber I am not.

At the break-stop, people collapsed from their bikes and dragged themselves to the very long queue for tea, coffee and a free snack. It was 2:45am. I’d been cycling for about 40km, and had another 60 to go. The app that was measuring my speed told me that I had in fact travelled 43km in 175 minutes. However, it had almost killed the battery on my phone so I had to switch the thing off to save what little electricity I had left.

It was a steep downhill from Crystal Palace, but this was followed by a series of up-and-down stretches. The down parts were OK but the up parts almost killed me. I don’t go south of the River much and I had no idea there were so many hills!

Dawn came on the stretch between Blackheath and Greenwich. The route, now mercifully flat, passed through Bermondsey and came to a temporary halt by City Hall, the site of the third break-stop. In the grey dawn, people downed Tunnock’s Caramel bars (which were given away free at this point) before saddling up and riding across Tower Bridge.

There followed a section though the City before a detour through the Docklands which took us onto the only cobbled part of the route. I was running on autopilot by now, and didn’t really care who whizzed past me, and on a cold Sunday morning I wasn’t in a position to appreciate the scenery – I just got my head down and cycled.

At 6:40am, Mile End was the last stop. The barrista van ran out of paper cups. Someone said that it was just 10 miles to the end, which didn’t make sense to my sleep-deprived mind (by my reckoning, it was longer than that) but I was happy to go along with that.

On the last leg, the big landmark for me was passing from the E postcode area to N. Almost home.

A quick downhill petered out to a steady climb through a series of back streets. I passed a sign to Alexandra Palace and knew I couldn’t be too far away. But surely I’d be able to see it? It is, after all, located on the top of a hill. In my mind I pictured it being clearly visible, and several hundred feet up. But then, to my left through the trees, I spotted the TV tower that stands on top of it. End in sight! But there was one last hill to manage. It – the road from Alexandra Palace Station to Ally Pally itself – was a tough one, at least for people who’d been cycling all night. Someone ahead of me got off and started to walk up with his bike. Sod that, I thought – I’d come this far and hadn’t walked once, and I wasn’t going to start on the last half-mile.

I finished at just after 8am. Factoring in rest stops, I reckoned I had rode 100km in just over 7 hours – which translates into an average speed of just over 8½ mph. Feeling knackered but nevertheless pleased with myself for having completed the ride and thus raised over £200 for a good cause, I collected my medal and joined the queue for the bacon rolls.

Back on my bike

Last weekend I had a couple of errands to run that took me to Highgate. I went on my bike, mainly because I hadn’t cycled for a while and felt that I should get into some sort of exercise routine. I own a hybrid bike – the type that combines elements from road bikes and mountain bikes and is designed for commuting; I originally brought it with this in mind but the combination of an accident back in January and a subsequent reluctance to cycle in bad weather meant that I have been using public transport to get to work more often than not in recent months.

I ended up at Parliament Hill Fields, which meant that I had two options for getting back to East Finchley. Both involved cycling up a very steep hill to get to Highgate Village. I chose Swains Lane, a street which goes up to the entrance to Highgate Cemetery before climbing steeply to get to the village itself. It seemed a bit daunting but I reckoned I could do it. How hard, I thought to myself, could it be?

In a word: Very.

The first part – getting up to the cemetery entrance – was harder than I thought, and it wasn’t long before I had the bike in the lowest possible gear. I was gasping for breath as I reached the cemetery gates, where the road levels out for a few yards before the really hard part starts. This is where the road narrows and climbs steeply up to the village. It was a hot morning, but luckily there was some shade from the overhanging trees.

There is an expression that cycling commentators on the TV use to describe what happens when a cyclist has done all he can and has nothing left to give – “he’s got nothing left in the tank”. Well I truly had nothing left in the tank on that second part of the climb. I don’t know how I did it but made it to the top without stopping, although by the end I was reduced to a crawl, my pulse was racing and the muscles in my legs were burning. At the top, I had to stop and get my breath back – it took at least twenty minutes for my breathing to get somewhere close to normal.

When I got home, I Googled Swains Lane out of curiosity and found that it is listed on cycling websites as one of the great road climbs of London. The graph showing the height gain makes it look particularly fearsome, especially the part after the cemetery where the gradient reaches 18%. Apparently, climbing Swains Lane 24 times is equivalent to one ascent of the infamous Mount Ventoux, and there are people – probably those guys who can be seen on proper racing bikes and decked out in brightly-coloured lycra every Sunday morning – who regard six goes at it as an adequate work-out! Once was enough for me.

Cycling has been on my mind a lot these past weeks, as like many others I followed the Tour de France. I usually enjoy watching the nightly highlights of this most gruelling of sporting events from the comfort of an armchair, although I’ll happily admit that there are certain things about it that I just don’t get, most notably some of the team tactics and the fact that there would appear to be a tradition of not challenging the leader on the last day. This year I was thrilled by Bradley Wiggins’s fantastic victory; I am sure I am not alone in stating that I never thought I would see a Briton win Le Tour. What a performance!

I must admit to being surprised to learn that the likes of Bradley Wiggins and Mark Cavendish were planning to take part in the men’s road race at the Olympics, which was due to take place less than a week after they’d completed Le Tour. Surely Cav, who had once again triumphed in the Paris stage of Le Tour, couldn’t pull off a win in this as well?

Even without the prospect of a Team GB medal hope, I was very keen to go and see part of the men’s road race as I hadn’t managed to get tickets for any of the Olympic events that I’d applied for, and the cycling road races were billed as events where anyone could come and line the route and cheer on the cyclists. Some online research showed that it was due to cross the Thames at Putney Bridge, so that was where I found myself at 9AM yesterday morning.

Crowds were already gathering, many of them with large flags (not just Union Jacks by any means) and quite a few people appeared to have cycled down. The atmosphere built up as the start time approached – the word was that they cyclists would reach Putney Bridge around ten minutes after starting on the Mall. The route had been fenced off, although that didn’t stop one guy from cycling along it, no hands on the handlebars and taking pictures of the crowd with his phone. He certainly didn’t look like an official Olympics person, and everyone seemed to find this hilarious.

As the big moment approached, police bikes started to appear on the route, with some of the riders obviously having the time of their lives, waving at and even trying to high-five the crowd. Helicopters hovered overhead and support vehicles also passed by, and then a roar of the crowd on the route prior to the bridge told us that the main event was about to arrive.

The peloton passed in a matter of seconds, and for those seconds the atmosphere was electric. Here was one of the few parts of the Olympics where anyone could turn up on the day and line the route to watch the race, and according to the BBC over a million people took that opportunity. Even though things did not work out for Mark Cavendish, it was still a fantastic experience for those of us who went to watch a little piece of sporting history.

And me? Well I was inspired this morning to get back on my bike and go for a ride in the City, coming home via the challenging Swains Lane.  I’m sure Wiggo and Cav would approve!