HOW many miles in HOW many minutes?

Since we decided, diligently, to dedicate our Wednesday evenings (previously referred to as languishing Wednesdays) to hill training, we though we better make a start and so headed out to Richmond Park from work. A beautiful sunny evening helped us on our way from Vauxhall, all the way along the river West to Putney Bridge and further West to Barnes where we entered the park. As we approached the park, cyclists began out numbering cars. This should have given us a clue, but innocently we pedalled along leisurely, with other cyclists whooshing past us, until we rolled through Roehampton Gate and entered a cycling metamorphasis. It appeared that we were not the only ones to pop out for a once round Richmond Park! As we paused at the entrance, open mouthed at the swathe of speeding cyclists zipping past our noses, we struck up conversation with a rather physically intimidating cyclist; complete in club branded lycra onesie and slick, impentrable wrap-around glasses. Initially impressed by our training efforts and forthcoming challenge, his enthusiam soon dwindled when asked "which is the least hilly way round the park?" He, incidentally, was there training for a race. Apparently they do an average of 26 miles per hour (have I ever reached 26 miles an hour?) although he didnt seem quite clear, "wait, how fast would I be going if i did 30 miles in an hour?" I suppose if you're pedalling hard enough to keep up that speed, it's reasonable that oxygen might not make it to the mathematical section of your brain?

Unperturbed (but letting him go ahead in front) off we set - in the hilly direction i might add - and we sped all the way up the short, incredibly steep hill which defeated us last time. Hurrah - progress. The most part of our journey was obscured by the blur of brightly coloured lycra and bulging calf muscles hurtling past us, but we completed two loops - one in each direction - taking about half an hour for each.

Mind you, it's all relative - we did get lapped by a roller blader, and a man pedalling with his hands! Still.

London's flat you say?

It is remarkable that we havent fallen out yet. We have upgraded from a once a month friendship to four, sometimes FIVE, days a week. And our joint responsibilities dont stop at cycling; after a healthy dose of en-mass bridesmaid shoe shopping the previous day, I pedal to Hammersmith to meet Kate once more and we're waved off by a smug Eleanor Brown. The two of us, head to toe in revolting padded lycra, watch her trot down the street; with her heels and little executive suitcase and well fitted, non reflective trousers, to catch a plane back to Dublin. We have no use for heals or natural fabrics these days so head up to North London for some hills.

Up through Ladbroke Grove we wind until we reach Hampstead Heath, notorious for it's unequalled views over London. There's a price to pay for this view though, and it temporarily defeats me and I stop for a breather half way up. Kate, however, pulls something extra out of the bag and soars to the top in one smooth, hyperventilating triumph! I catch her up at the top but having being stung before and now inherently suspiciously, we dont believe that could've reached the actual top already - there must be a sneaky verticle revine out of sight, round the corner - and therefore dont stop to admire the spectacle which should act as our bounty. We realise too late, once we've soared partly down the other side. No view point is worth cycling back up. Instead we press on up through, what Darius would describe as undulating, Crouch End and Muswell Hill until I in particular am rewarded with my first visit to Alexandra Palace, panoramic views and a cold pint of Grolsch with a packet of salt and vinegar.

Pitstop complete, we cross East to Tottenham, stopping off at Kate's brother's house for a cup of tea. But he's not in so, seeing as how well we had done (and not influenced by the pint of beer) we cut our ride short and take the direct route home through town, via Farringdon.

A huge thank you to Winifred of The Allsop Convention fame! Brilliant!

It was the worst Christmas ever.

Where shall we head off to this weekend? I know. Oxford. Across the Chiltern Hills. 65 miles. It'll be a breeze.

Having no idea what we were letting ourselves in for, one cloudy Sunday Clare and I packed our bags with plenty of lucozade, flapjack , and a map showing a few main roads, and set off for Oxford. For the second time in our short training experience, we headed down the length of the tedious Uxbridge Road all the way from Shepherd's Bush to Uxbridge, all the way fighting a strong head-wind, and onwards towards Slough. These first, extremely dull, 18 miles passed quickly and we were feeling really quite pleased with ourselves. Then the limitations of our road map became clear and, coincidentally, this was where the Chiltern Hills also began. We appeared to enter the Bermuda Triangle of the Chilterns, and in a bid to follow signs to Burnham Beeches (no such signs appeared), we seemingly cycled around in circles for who knows how long. All roads led to a place called Farnham Common; no matter how far we cycled, signs would insist that it was merely 2 miles away. The joy of freewheeling down enormous hills was crushed by the wince-inducing fear that we would reach the bottom only to find that we had gone the wrong way and would have to haul ourselves back up to the top. The comparative luxury of the certainty that we had gone the wrong way never appeared, however, and we blundered on blindly. We stumbled across Marlow, which was but a short-lived success when we again managed to go wrong and inadvertently spent extra time, energy, and miles on heading too far south towards to Henley.

Around mile 40 we met a friendly cyclist from a local club; we must have been looking particularly pallid and pathetic already because he quickly offered us some of his energy gels. We declined in favour of yet more trusty flapjacks. Checked cycling man's far more sensible map, and continued on our way towards Christmas Common, which my dad had already informed us was 'at the top of an enormous, very steep hill - good luck with that' (nothing like fatherly encouragement). He was not wrong. Not only was it enormous and very steep, the single track road up it ran through a dark gully surrounded by trees so that we had no way of telling where the top was, and it wound up the hillside offering hopeful corners that looked like each one 'really could be the top this time'. Clare and I crawled up the hill in the lowest of gears, at times going so slowly the momentum could barely keep our bikes from wobbling over. Every 10 feet we stopped for 30 second breaks in which to pant and grimace. During one such break I quietly suggest that I might just sod it and get off and push. 'NO!' yells Clare, 'NO pushing!' though her face seems to retract this fairly swiftly after seeing my murderous expression. I resist the overwhelming urge to fling my bike into the bushes and stomp off like a 2 year old, and we wobble on. Remarkably, we did finally reach the summit of this behemoth, and found new enthusiasm to leap over to the edge of the trees to look at the colossal hill that we've just climbed. It's less than impressive, as these photos show. But according to our reliable sources at Wikipedia, it is pretty damn big.

We plonked ourselves down on a log to have a well earned snack, when shortly, as if in a pork pie-induced hallucination, a colourful vintage tractor grinds up the hill, almost as slowly (surely not!) as we did but minutes ago, followed by another, and then a whole onslaught of the things. We wave to the drivers in a bemused fashion, simultaneously wishing that we'd got a tow up the hill and thanking our lucky stars that our painful, undignified ascent wasn't witnessed by all of these tractors in some kind of competition-of-the-slowest stand-off.

We sent a desperate text ('buy cheese!!') to the lovely Tor Saner who is now a mere 7.5 miles away in Oxford waiting to provide us with food on our arrival, and lumbered ourselves back on the bikes. A strange thing seemed to happen at this point, as we both appeared to have something wrong with our gears. We were both in easy gears normally reserved for getting a flying start at traffic lights, yet the pedals were barely going round. But no. This wasn't some sort of mysterious conspiracy, we had simply lost any strength that we once had in our legs. It was going to be a long 7 miles. About a mile outside of the city centre, I had a slight meltdown triggered by the sight of Clare speeding off into the distance ahead of me (in reality, she was probably going a glacial 8 mph compared to my 7, but things get blown out of proportion when you can't feel your legs and have eaten enough flapjack to feed a small army of goats.) All my brain could think about was how utterly impossible it would be to cycle all the way to Paris and why the hell did we think that we could do this. Clare did her best to cheer me up with a brief pep talk by the Oxford sign on a huge roundabout, followed by a tourists' guide to all the sites and sounds of Oxford that we passed. It was surprisingly effective at distracting my dazed thoughts towards anything other than how miserably painful everything was.

We arrived at Tor's excited about the cheese and the warm welcome. She was out. No matter though, she rushed up soon after, clutching promising-looking dairy products. Being the first time I'd met Tor, it was unfortunate that I was covered in sweat and lycra and only really capable of shoveling pasta into my mouth whilst staring at the space in front of me. I have yet to prove to her that I can do otherwise. Thanks for putting up with us Tor! And the irony is not lost on me that your name is a type of hill...

Plans change

Nightbuses home from Dalston at 4am ain’t quick. Unable to fully open my eyes, I answered the phone with trepidation - dreading that they were waiting outside. To my joy both Simon and James were even more comatose than I was. Our 88 mile ride around the forthcoming London Olympic route seemed fraught with difficulties – namely fearsome hangovers all round. We re-forecast our route; 50 miles East along the Thames to Southend sounded feasible 

The boys turned up two hours late in matching skin tight lycras and red and black chequered cycling jerseys blazoned with Big Issue branding. They looked the part. They looked ready to rip. Looks are deceiving. Our pale, drawn faces quietly ate bacon sandwiches. James demonstrated resilience and temper control as he wrongly installed my bike computer three times. Just as we were about to raise our limp, alcohol-ridden bodies from the sofa, my housemate’s parents arrived at mid day to see the new house; proffering a rather serious looking bottle of Champagne. They generously issued each of us with a glass - full to the brim – all the time looking on expectantly. Tactics? My gin soaked stomach clenched violently at the smell of more alcohol and I politely declined. James quietly put his to the side. Simon downed his in one. 

Once actually on the bikes we set off in fine fettle, out of Herne Hill towards the river via a slight wrong-turn through a bottlenecked Camberwell market. Simon and James attracting much attention in their bold, tight, get-up. An unforeseen ‘no right turn’ took us over Tower Bridge and we followed a pleasingly calm cycle route through Limehouse, which surprised us with its lovely sad looking riverside warehouses. On we went, with blind faith the neat blue cycle path was taking us somewhere we wanted to go, and satisfied with the impressive views of Canary Wharf and the O2 Arena.

  Whilst cycling through Mudchute the grand frontage of The National Maritime Museum on the other side of the river caught our eyes and, parched-mouthed, we dreamed of a lunch stop in Greenwich. A good amount of time was spent searching for a bridge. There isn’t one. We had set a precedent of not checking the map early on and Simon certainly wasn’t going to give in at this late stage. After some to-ing and fro-ing we eventually found the foot tunnel which passes underneath the Thames. As I carried my, blissfully light, bicycle down more and more steps, deeper and deeper under the Thames and along the damp tunnel at the bottom I thought of that famous old proverb; what goes down… is a hell of a lot harder to carry up again. As it turns out tight spiral stairs aren’t designed for carrying bicycles, especially with crowds of tourists coming the opposite way. But what’s a few gorged shins between strangers in a tunnel?

As we emerged the other side Simon and James’ flashbacks of competitive Jaegerbomb drinking just hours before, were making their presence felt. We’d run out of water and needed lunch. I felt certain I could navigate us to a beer garden I had once stumbled across, tucked away on a residential street. Silence fell as half way along my proposed route came an almighty hill. My body thumped with the shock real exertion. I felt sick. Simon arrived at the top; speechless and shaking with urgent need of food. No sign of the pub. Silence. Down the hill again. Silence. In to the nearest café. Silence. Sausage sandwiches arrived. Silence. Jugs of water disappeared. Offence banter returned. With a small amount of energy restored we leveraged ourselves back on to our bikes and found much maligned beer garden. Two hours of silence from Simon other than to exchange brutal obscenities or to reassert that he was getting the Greenwich ferry home.

Finally the challenge won him over and we at least made it along to see the Thames Barrier and then an extremely direct journey home.

20 miles there. 10 miles back. And almost on speaking terms!