The mile long queue to get into registration!

As I approached the registration point at the Meadows Equestrian Centre shortly before 8am a slow moving queue of cars was already building up. I abandoned the car and cycled on in, the first of many miles to be ridden today. It was after 9am before the rest of the team managed to get in and registered, and it was a cold wait, but the Hi-De-Hi style PA announcer managed to keep the gathering crowd’s spirits up even through the rainstorm that closed in just before the off. “It’s just a shower”, he promised. Yeah.

Almost ready to go...

Just after 9:30 we were off to Lap The Lough with a small crowd of random spectators waving us on our way. Rain showers and a strong, cold wind blowing in from the north made the first leg to the Washing Bay water stop quite a struggle at times. I was glad I’d brought my jacket and gloves, but even so I was still shivering for a while and could hardly feel my fingers to work the brakes at times, which is hardly ideal when moving in a large groups of cyclists.

Washing Bay. Don't let the sunshine fool you.

Still, the pace had been easy so far and we were all in fine form as we hit Washing Bay at about 17 miles in. The wind was still cold and strong, but the sky was brightening and the hardy were taking their jackets off, so things were looking up for the next leg to the Ballyronan Marina feeding station.

We were still travelling at an easy pace behind a large group, but as this group hit the steepest hill of the day – half a mile of 3.5% – they slowed and slowed and slowed to a crawl until I couldnae take it any more and sprinted past to the top of the hill. The drugs hit however and I had to back off at the top, but soon recovered and we were on our way again, this time at a much healthier pace.

Pulling in to Ballyronan Marina

We lost Nige and Steve at the marina as we waited for them to catch up, not realising they’d done a quick stop and headed on trying to catch up with us. Communication fail. Maybe we should have walkie talkies next year? Or, you know, use our mobiles.

Moving on from Ballyronan we rounded the north west corner of the lough and headed for Antrim, and to our relief the still strong wind was now coming from the side. Traffic through Toome was slow and my progress was further hindered by missing a right turn sign that was obscured by the cars! Fortunately I saw the sign at the last moment and so didn’t travel very far in the wrong direction at all.

Stuffing faces at Shane's Castle

The Shane’s castle lunch stop at 52 miles was pleasant enough and the weather continued to improve. Refuelled on sandwiches and with the wind now at our backs, the final miles to Kinnego flew past. Well, apart from Graham who was struck with cramp and had to have a little lie down in the road for a bit. It wasn’t bad timing actually, as we were stuck behind a slow group on a narrow road with no chance to pass. Nice one, G, and sorry for taking off after that and leaving you to catch up.

Taking on "water" with ten miles to go

Ten miles to go saw the final water stop, though the liquid the lads took on here bore little resemblance to water. It was black, thick, had a head, came in pint glasses and tasted of Guinness. Whatever, it seemed to do the trick and the mood was light for the final stretch. Allan and Pete missed out as they’d sped on, eager to get chomping on the promised hogroast and crepes at the finish line, no doubt. Nige and I came in next, to more cheers and waves from more random spectators, with the rest following a short distance behind.

Lap The Lough number 2 was complete!

Allan, ever prepared, had a mini video camera with him took some footage of the ride, including some intrepid interviews.

I’ve also uploaded a few photographs of my own to a Lap The Lough 2010 photo album, and a GPS track of my Lap The Lough ride on RunKeeper.

I completed the 83.5 mile course in 5:33:30, averaging just over 15 mph and a shade slower than last year. I’m a little disappointed with that time, but then I have to remember that on Friday I wasn’t going, after sleeping all of Saturday I was 50/50, and even on Sunday morning it was still a case of get-up-and-see-how-it-feels. Legs were leaden, no speed. From sticking together and travelling with other groups the pace was easy throughout (well, mostly), but that was welcome given how I was feeling. Honestly, I’m glad just have made it around!

At this point I am required to mention that I was beaten by a girl, @lisam75, on her first time lapping, by over half an hour. Well done, and see you next year *evil laugh*

Lap The Lough 2010

The event was better organised and signposted than 2009 I think, certainly registration went much more smoothly (though to be fair the LtL Powers That Be were surprised by the numbers showing up on the day last year). Pre-registration and a cap of 1,500 participants seemed to work well. I’ve only heard reports of one minor accident too.

Lap The Lough is a great day out on the bike and is suitable for even the most average of cyclists. The atmosphere is how I imagine riding the last day of Le Tour must be, a bit of cycling that’s as serious as you want it to be. I very much enjoyed my 2010 Lap and I’ll definitely be back for more in 2011 if I’m able.

Did you take part in Lap The Lough 2010? How was it for you? Let me know in the comments!

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I’ll attempt a summary of the last couple of weeks.

Following on from my 25 mile fuel experiment commute, I squeezed in another couple of 20-25 mile rides that week. The first went well, but I was very tired starting the second and it took a while to get going properly. A puncture at five miles out almost had me turning back, but I persevered and eventually found some mojo towards the middle of the ride.

On the Sunday after that, Graham, Allan and I took in another lap of Strangford Lough to rack up a decent 50 mile training ride. I wasn’t feeling great and almost cried off  on the Saturday, but Graham invoked the Chicken Noise Protocol, and under the terms of the Man Code I was therefore required to accept the challenge. That was how I found myself in Newtownards at 8:30am on Sunday morning with legs that I wasn’t sure would last the day.

The weather was being kind for once, bright and sunny with not much wind. We made decent time to Portaferry, but my hamstrings were feeling tight and I wasn’t in the mood for pushing anyway. After crossing on the ferry, heeding the old advice about not paying the ferryman, the run across to Downpatrick was completed very quickly but the hillier terrain up the other side of the lough to Comber proved to be more of a challenge. I’d had a few crampy twinges so I was holding back and protecting my legs, especially on the hills, and I guess it was working as I wasn’t getting any worse.

When we rolled into Newtownards again with 50-odd miles on the clock I was still feeling the same. Although this may sound bad, I took it as encouragement for Lap The Lough as I also felt I could have gone on for a good few miles more. I think the fitness is there for the event. Hurrah!

This last week however I started to feel progressively worse. A drenched 25 mile commute on Wednesday probably didn’t help, and on Friday I came down with an ear infection. I’ve been prescribed a course of antibiotics to treat it which, from experience, will leave me feeling listless, nauseous and bloody awful just in time for Lap The Lough this coming Sunday.

Keep Calm and Carry On, Regardless

I’m glad this is taper week, I really don’t feel like training. I’ll maybe try a short/medium commute midweek just to see how it feels and gauge how much effort is sustainable for Sunday, but that’ll be it. Sleep, I hope, will feature heavily this week.

Still, carry on regardless, matron. I’ll be there on race day.

Don’t forget! You can sponsor me for Lap The Lough 2010 and help blind and partially sighted people through RNIB NI. You can donate online using major debit or credit cards, or directly via PayPal to donations@sponsorjohn.com. Please consider supporting this worthy cause! Thanks!

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Firstly, the ride was fine and I was feeling my normal self again, so that’s a relief. The conditions weren’t great either, with blustery wind in the hills at the start, followed with a strong headwind along the coast and then proper actual rain as I got into Belfast. I managed an average of about 18.0 mph until I hit the city centre. That’s down a little, but as I said it was into a fierce wind, and I did get stuck behind a slow cyclist (on a fast bike!) for a stretch along the A2 where it was too busy to pull out and pass safely, so I’m not too concerned.

The fuel experiment was the most interesting aspect though. Conventional wisdom has it that hard cycling will burn up to 60g of carbohydrate per hour, but I wanted to see how much I’d burn personally so I could better judge how much food to carry with me on Lap The Lough.

Here comes the science part.

Breakfast consisted of about 30g of carbohydrate from some toast and a small glass of energy drink. This lasted about 30 minutes as I made my way towards the Beltoy Road, when, as expected, I had a bit of a”bonk” (stop sniggering, you know what I mean). A further 50g of carbs from a rapidly snarfed gel pack lasted me the rest of the ride and I began to feel just the start of another drop in energy with just a couple of miles to go.

So 80g of fuel lasted me about 90 minutes of quite high output, giving an approximate rate of consumption of 50g/hour. That’s right in the ballpark conventional wisdom suggests. Now this is a much higher level of effort than I could sustain for the 90 miles of the Lap The Lough route, but it’s an anchor point to work from, and suggests a maximum requirement of 275g of fuel for the event if I match last year’s average pace. I’ll take more than that, of course.

Science is fun. Also, useful.

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At 6:30 am, as I got the BeOne ready for a long way commute, I wasn’t actually feeling bad as such. I’d had a good 43 mile ride on Sunday and had been resting up since then so I should have been fresh, but still I knew somehow, something wasn’t quite right.

So I set out into the cool morning air and kept the pace easy to warm up. Then only four or five miles in: bonk, power failure, no reason. Just as the hills started too. I should have been rested; I should have been fuelled; I should have been warmed up; but as Bradley Wiggins said after his disappointment in the Tour de France, sometimes you can do everything right and it still just doesn’t work. Hearin’ you, Brad.

There was a turnoff that would have cut short my intended loop, but I rode past it stuffing an energy bar into my face (just in case) and kept plugging on. Uphill. Slowly. Painfully. Stupidly? Probably.

Let’s not overstate things though.  It’s just a bike ride and I made it all right in the end. I recorded an 18.0mph average over the first 18 miles (or so) as I joined the M5 cycle path at Jordanstown, which only dropped to 17.5mph after the city centre traffic was negotiated. That’s surprisingly adequate given how it felt on the bike.

I’m pretty tired now and I’ve almost convinced myself I’m sickening for something, but in reality it’s probably just an off day and I’ll bounce back by the weekend.

Maybe I should take more heed of myself. Sometimes, I just know.

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Bobbies on bicycles will be a familiar sight on the Lagan towpath next week in a crackdown on aggressive behaviour towards walkers.

It follows a flurry of reports of inconsiderate behaviour from some cyclists towards pedestrians sharing the riverside trail.

The 11-mile towpath is Northern Ireland’s most popular public walkway, but a number of walkers have been upset by cyclists racing past without ringing warning bells and yelling at them to get out of the way, say staff from Lagan Valley Regional Park.

This isn’t a debate on who’s misbehaving the most on the towpath; there are undoubtedly examples on all sides. Not to mention the population of free roaming dogs, drinkers and kids on motorised quad-bikes and scooters that are arguably a better target for police resources.

No, it’s the article itself I take issue with. It’s sensationalist, misleading and short on detail. It’s a piece worthy of the Daily Mail.

Lagan Towpath

A “flurry” of “aggressive behaviour” and ”cycle rage” becomes “number of walkers have been upset” by “some cyclists” by the second paragraph. In fact, “cycle rage” appears only in the headline.

What have this unknown number of walkers been upset by? Is passing slow moving pedestrians “aggressive behaviour” now? I’d also like more detail on the “yelling” too. That’s a provocative word, and I’ll bet it’s more often a call out to make walkers aware of an approaching bicycle. So what’s it to be: pass in silence or call out?

By the end of the article the tone has changed further, when we see what the Lagan Valley Regional Park (LVRP) staff actually hope to achieve with the exercise.

“…police officers on bicycles will team up with staff from LVRP, Sustrans and other partner agencies to issue leaflets and advice to cyclists and walkers…”

“We simply want to encourage everyone using the towpath for leisure, whether for walking, running, exercising their dogs or cycling, to show courtesy to other users.”

So not really a “crackdown” on cyclists, but a positive and light-handed effort to help everyone just get along.

That’s better, isn’t it?

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35Km long, 25Km wide, 150Km around, Lough Neagh is the largest lake in Ireland and Britain and the third largest in Western Europe. On Sunday 29th of August I’ll be cycling around it with 1,500 other idiots in Northern Ireland’s largest cycling event.

Once again, I’m using the event to raise sponsorship money for RNIB NI via my Sponsor John! website. Last year it raised £650! I’m late to the party this year as I wasn’t sure I was going to be fit for the challenge, but any money raised in the 30-odd days that remain is welcome.

Sponsor John! Help me raise money for RNIB NI!

First and foremost, please consider making a donation to this worthy cause! Donations can be made easily and securely online via credit/debit card or PayPal account. All payments are handled on PayPal’s industrial strength secure servers so no-one will ever see your card details.

If you have a personal or business blog or website of your own, any donation will earn you a link from the sponsor list displayed on the sponsorjohn.com front page. Sponsors are listed in order of amount donated and time of donation so those who make the largest, earliest donations will appear higher up the list!

As well as donating your hard earned cash, you can help by telling your family, friends and colleagues about the sponsorjohn.com website and linking to it on blogs, social networks, forums and so on.

For more information and to make a donation, please visit the website, or feel free to email me at 2010@sponsorjohn.com if you have any questions.

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Antrim Road, Belfast, this morning.

I didn’t see what the gap was at the end. 39 seconds perhaps?

Still, it doesn’t matter really. It’s not a race, is it?

Oh, one other thing I should mention. I was in recovery pootle mode.

Take ‘er easy, Blue Ribble. I was.

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Fast, Slow, Fast-Lost, Slow ... around the Ards Peninsula

The weather on the peninsula was much better than last week; still overcast, but not nearly as windy or humid. Good! But still, it was a slightly subdued bunch that set off from Newtownards down the coast road to Portaferry again. Apart from Allan, who was his usual cheery self, and set a brisk pace up around 20mph. That fairly woke me up and got last night’s MEAT digesting.

In fact we averaged over 18mph on these first 20 miles, a pace that was pr0bably helped by a few hill sprint contests. I don’t normally go in for those so I must have been feeling better. Graham, who normally drops me, was hanging on the back having a bad day, and I think welcomed the food stop at Portaferry.

So far so good, then we got lost coming out of Portaferry. I say “we”, but it was Cap’n Navigation here who was leading, so really … well you get the idea. I’d meant to take the A2 to Cloughey but we ended up on the decidedly more minor and circuitous Ballyblack Road. Cloughey was reached in the end but at the cost of a few extra miles and some hills. I’m sure the lads appreciated the detour though. It was fun, right? Lads? Hello?

Out of Cloughey and on the coast road to Ballyhalbert – a road who’s surface wouldn’t be out of place on the Paris-Roubaix – we continued to make good time until at around 30 miles in there was a snapping sound from the back and Graham fully dropped off, his off day getting worse. I also got hit in the head by some kind of flying buglet, which kind of half stung me in the impact I think, and at any rate forced a dismount and helmet removal to check for damage. An easy pace was maintained to the next food stop a few miles down the road in Millisle.

From there it was a climb up to the top of Movilla Road and a bit of a slog into a headwind across the top until we dropped back down into Newtownards and the end of the ride. Allan took the honours for the final sprint, darn him.

Despite the rough start I was pleasingly pleased with how I did on today’s 48-odd mile loop. I wasn’t totally exhausted at the end and I’d put in a good base pace and some hard sprints in the early sections too.

Today was also the final stage of the 2010 Tour de France. It’s been a tough three weeks, sitting watching it, and I wish I’d brought some Champagne out on the ride with us to celebrate. I’ll have to remember that for next year.

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The route was a simple clockwise loop, starting from Newtownards then following the A-roads (and a couple of wahaay-roads) to Portaferry, Strangford, Balloo, Whiterock, Comber and back. I’d ridden parts of this loop before, but not all of it and not the whole way around, and believe it or not I’d never been on the Portaferry ferry before either, so today promised to be a bit of an adventure for me.

Look, I don’t get out much.

Strangford Lap Adventure!

We set out from Newtownards in less than ideal conditions. It was sticky hot, like the start of an eventful night in a bad detective novel, and we faced a respectable headwind too as we made our way down the Portaferry Road along the shore. I was very quickly very dripping with sweat when I stopped to fix an early snakebite puncture. Lovely.

It could have been worse though. We did at least have the rain to provide some cooling.

The run to Portaferry was uneventful, then I got a go on the ferry to Strangford, and after a quick comfort stop we were off again. The wind was behind us now, but the hills out of Strangford and on into Balloo still had bite, and Allan was struggling with shoulder cramps brought on by (we think) an awkward bike setup. Also a squeaky pedal, which was very annoying. Sort that out mate. We stopped a couple of times to try some field adjustments, but our tinkering didn’t do a lot of good.

A 35mph descent from Killinchy into Whiterock, in the rain, with a right-angle left at the end and nothing but rocks and water beyond, livened things up a bit as we left the A-roads and wound our way along the coastal back roads towards Comber. Allan was really struggling with his shoulder by now and had to sit up constantly, and I’d run out of water and was cramping, so this (hilly) section was taken at a verrry leisurely pace.

Eventually we returned to the main roads and took the A21 from Comber back into Newtownards again. Spotting another cyclist in the distance released some untapped energy and we hammered along, until I blew up a mile or so from the finish with a nasty cramp. Ease it on home, big lad, that’ll teach you to run out of drinkies.

One question remains: every other cyclist or group of cyclists we met seemed to be on an anti-clockwise lap as opposed to our clockwise option. Is there something I’m missing?

52.6 miles and 3,200 feet of climbing, completed in 3:27 for an average of 15.4 mph. Happy with that.

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I spotted your orange jacket in the distance and gave chase, but you held your speed and took the corners more aggressively than I dared in the wind and rain, so the gap remained. I caught you at the Dargan Road lights but you stamped on the pedals and took off again. 18, 19, 20, 21, 22 mph along Duncrue Road, uphill and into the headwind; I was too far in the red to keep up and you got through the lights before me, and before they changed. Last I saw you, you were diving into traffic along Nelson Street. Cheerio then, I could use the break.

Your leathery skin, zero-body-fat looking face, calf muscles filled with steel cables and suspiciously yellow trainer looking rear tyre make me think you spend a lot of time riding bikes, and that I should spend more.

Chapeau!

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