Central London CTC blog

Colin Wing’s rides have a following. I counted 14 on the ride, though somehow there were only 13 names in the attendance book. We left Enfield via the elegant Gentleman’s Row and the New River, built in the reign of James I to bring water to London.

The New River in Enfield

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Mikael Colville-Andersen, Cophenhagenize.com‘s committed advocate of cycling for Everyman (the word comprises women too), is pleased to refer to sporting riders, all right, ‘roadies’, as a ‘speed-obsessed subculture’.

OK, we own up, it does rather look like that to judge by this GPS trace of Thursday’s RP Tune-up and Social, downloaded from Damian’s Garmin.

Nice consistent pattern...pity about the red light at 20 km (click for full-sized version)

The sustained brisk progress over the course of the hour’s riding is rather pleasing, but I would point out that we were lapped on the Inner Circle by a hard-charging group of Phoenixes. Now they definitely are speed-obsessed.

In deference to Mr Snuggs, I would add that the Thursday evening club session is for pleasure. It is not training, no sirree! We can do slow cycling with equal pleasure. And in Copenhagen too.

Stevenage CTC’s season-closing Audax, Summertime Reversed (Desrever Emitremmus, if you must) has a loyal following, and 19 (we think) of the Central London Massive turned out to represent, a good number of them even wearing the colours.

We were split into two start groups. Ours took off from Costello’s Cafe shortly after 10 in mild, dry, cloudy conditions. With a gentle south-westerly drift assisting us, we soon engaged the narrow lanes towards Aston, where single file is mandatory. Unsurprisingly, the usual suspects stuck together, and the group of Damian, Jon, Mike and I rode the course together.

The 100-km course is so well-known to readers as to require no further recapitulation. The helpful breeze encouraged us, and we were well up to the mark at the first and second controls, so took a leisurely break for coffee at Saffron Walden. There, Andrew was already remounting and wondered what had kept us; as a hardened Audaxer, he eschewed our cafe-racer idleness. more »