Category: Training

This is the category where all training related posts go.

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February Social Ride

This weekend saw the February Tri London social ride take place. Organized by Roz, Luis & Prasoon, 25 riders showed up for our jaunt out to Windsor, despite an early-ish and not-quite-spring weather. With lots of Tri London kit on display (plus a few new faces) the scene was set for an excellent day out.

The ride through central London was nice and quiet – one of the benefits of an early start on Sunday! With little traffic to get in the way we made good time out through town, especially through Sloane square and down the King’s Road – even with an early flat just before Putney. Richmond Park was overflowing with similarly-minded cyclists making the most of the day, and at that point the contingent split into smaller groups to make it a bit easier for traffic to move past.

After getting through Kingston the route took us out past Hampton Court and then following roughly parallel to the Thames, out to Thorpe and towards Ascot with some lovely scenery, a good climb and some fast TT sections. We arrived at Windsor just after 11.30 for a refreshment stop, which covered all the bases: cake, coffee, baked potatoes and second-helpings of cake.

A few folk got the train back into London, whilst the rest of us headed back home by bike after the half hour cake bonanza! With a slightly shorter distance left to come home, the route took us through scenic Horton and Wraysbury, the less scenic Staines, and then onto the banks of the Thames back into Hampton and Richmond. The sun even deigned to make an appearance on the way back, which made the ride all the nicer (or was that the tailwind?)

All in all a great day’s riding! Even with three punctures across the groups, everyone made good time and got home tired but happy – and with just enough time left for a well-earned Sunday roast.

Many thanks to Luis, Prasoon and Roz for organising and leading the ride. The next social ride is 15th March – don’t forget to join us!

If you’d like to follow the route, it’s available here. Note that we took the opposite way round the Windsor loop to put the coffee stop a bit closer to home…

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Great Tri London Bake Off 2015

Good nutrition being one of the pillars of sports performance, the brave and the hungry met for a night of showing off of cooking skills and carbo-loading in the now traditional TriLondon Bake Off in its 2015 edition.

Last year’s counted 30+ people and 22 dishes, and this time it was more than 40 famished folks enjoying 26 entries! It was hard work tasting everything, so some ended having one for the road at the Vine.1926105_10155138792355261_2965398585207586102_o

Congratulations to Annah for her winning savoury dish – Cheesy Bread Dip – and Etty and Charlotte’s winning sweet, mini nutella biscuit burgers. Both very worthy winners in a tightly contest bake-off!

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Big thanks to Amy, Alex and Etty for being fantastic hosts. Kris Boye even made the journey over from Denmark to check that the standards of baking haven’t dropped this year! Thank you to everyone who attended and made it a very fun social evening.

Thanks to Mauricio & Alan for the report & Mauricio for providing pictures!

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UK Cold Water Swim Championships

Time Out calls it “one of the most bonkers events of the year”. We call it “another day at the pool”.

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This year’s UK Cold Water Swimming Championships at Tooting Bec Lido saw 3 teams of 4 TriLondoners doing the 4x30m relays. Our brave swimmers say it was a cool thing to do, us spectators preferred to chill and watch, hot drink in hand.

Fun fact:  the water was so cold that Simon had to step on it and heel-kick a hole in it in order to start his swim, and there’s photographic proof of that…

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Thanks to Mauricio for the report!
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Velodrome Session – 17th January

Part of the legacy of London 2012 Olympics is London’s cycling paradise… also know as the Lee Valley Velopark. TriLondon was there last year for the first duathlon in the road circuit, and now we came back to have a go in the Velodrome itself.
The Club organised a 2 hour coached session where an instructor took a bunch of us (some more scared than others) through the motions and had us riding on the walls in no time. Starting off with learning to ride a fixed bike, all 16 riders rapidly progressed through to paceline work, then stacking up 3 abreast round the track. The day finished off with a timed flying lap, with our bike coordinator Ciaran putting in the fastest time of the day in 17.44 seconds.
The word of the day was “exhilarating”. Do not miss the next session if you’re lucky enough to have your name in!velodrome 1 velodrome 2 velodrome 0