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Cycling

Are you doing ride London?

A friend texted me at the weekend to ask me this. I was in Suffolk doing a shoot of a private house but hadn’t though about doing it. I followed the progress of some of it during the day as the ride got cut short due to the weather. But all along I was thinking, why didn’t I want to do that ‘event’? I kind of poo-pooed it a bit on Twitter and re-tweeted a few things which were generally negative about the whole thing. But then I felt quite guilty about it all when I saw how many people posted their Strava uploads of the ride, especially having waxed lyrical about the Dunwich Dynamo. To be fair I did also post that it wasn’t my thing and I hoped everyone riding had a great time.

The idea of riding on closed roads sounds amazing, especially through London. However one of the things that doesn’t appeal to me is riding with that many people and all of very different abilities – I don’t mean that in a snotty way either. Dunwich was around 2000-3000 people but got spread out pretty quickly and also was pretty informal. Ride London was in the region of 30,000 I believe and over a far shorter route so there’s far more chance of getting caught up in a crash or some idiot racing you who doesn’t have the experience of riding at speed.

I’ve also never had a good ride with massive groups of people. We used to go mountainbiking with groups of up to 20 people and progress was inevitably slow. Rides, both on and off road, got better when the groups got smaller. 2 – 6 people is about right for me, and especially when riding on the road I prefer to know that they’re safe to ride with.

The other thing that I didn’t find appealing was that it was billed as a sportive of sorts which seemed odd considering they had a podium at the end? A leisure ride is great but if every MAMIL is racing through it it becomes unsafe pretty quickly in my mind. Those who know how to race probably weren’t riding – I don’t know how to race either.

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I guess the main reason for not doing it was that I could go and ride those climbs or route on my own, or with someone else, and have more fun doing so. One of the best aspects for me starting road riding is that you can get to some pretty incredible places on your own or with a friend and see scenery and ride roads that enable a quiet almost contemplative state. That overwhelming sense of calm would be lost with 29,999 other riders in my mind.

Chapeau to those who took part but it’s not my thing. The ride on the Sat for families looked far more fun although don’t get me started on high vis!