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!