Bike Ride

Yesterday David and I arranged to meet up after work and cycle the bike route of the TTT triathlon, all part of our meticulous research for our race in 2 weeks time. Obviously normal people spend Friday evening in the pub getting wasted, but no, we know better apparantly.

We met up in good time at 7pm, there was still plenty of daylight and the rain was a mere drizzle for a nice cooling effect on the bike, it was quite warm at this point. David was wearing his trisuit (and a t shirt to protect his modesty) being a girly I put on a jacket over my bike shorts and stragglist top. David was in charge of map, haribo, phone etc, I had been instructed to bring myself (could just about manage that).

We set off across Bushy Park to the start point, although we didn’t bother to backtrack 10 metres down the road to the official  bike-mount point. While we were debating whether this was necessary or not, a passing man gave me a funny look when I used the words ‘mounting area’. Obviously not a triafferlete.

The first part of the ride went very smoothly. Along the road to Hampton Court, round the roundabout, back again and heading in the direction of Sunbury. Four or five miles in I was thinking it was actually quite a pleasant way to spend Friday evening, David hadn’t dropped me too much, the route was pleasant enough if a bit trafficky (but it was rush hour)……. then we unexpectedly arrived at Sunbury Cross and almost cycled on to the M3.

We decided this couldn’t be right due to the sudden lack of correlation between anything whatsoever on the map and in real life. This map I speak of was printed off the TTT website and stuffed down David’s top. We couldn’t make head nor tail of it, and the rain was getting heavier, so decided to venture into the giant Tescos for a minute where we would be sure to find an A to Z. We couldn’t find one.

When we came out of Tescos (where David’s trisuit had attracted some ‘looks’) we decided to walk back up the road to Sunbury Cross roundabout to see if we had taken the wrong turning. Again nothing seemed to match the map, so we took the opportunity to eat the haribo. Across the road was a handy police station – shut. Not that we were lost I hasten to add, we knew exactly where we were, we just didn’t know where we were supposed to be. The police station did have a handy dry porch (it was REALLY raining by now) which we sheltered under as David had suddenly remembered his mobile phone could do  google maps. We found out we had gone wrong within the first mile or so and missed a left turn, which was not AT ALL clear on the stoopid map.

It was now pouring with rain, a bit dark, quite cold and we had one front light between us. First good decision of the evening – we decided to go home! By the time we got back to Bushy Park (where we bumped into Stuart out running – he could have told us the route if we had seen him earlier!) it had stopped raining and was really light again, but we were cold and wet.

After a shower and meeeting the others for a pizza we decided it hadn’t been so bad after all – at least we now knew which way not to go, and we had done a 10-11 mile training ride in far worse traffic and hopefully worse weather than we will get on the day of the race!