The Leading for Life Challenge

In about 36 hours, Zi-Su and I will start our cycle ride from London to Paris.  Yikes.

As I type this, Zi-Su is busy making quick major repairs to his bike (ie fixing the brakes which have been the cause of much drama as he’s been unable to stop at several junctions) and I’m putting everything I need to pack into a pile as demonstrated by this:

How do I feel?  Nervous.  Excited.  Scared.  Looking forward to it?  Yes.

What’s been super encouraging is how generous people have been in sponsoring us so far.  We’re nearly at £1900 and we’d LOVE to be to £3000 by the time we leave on Thursday!  If you haven’t already, you can sponsor us here: http://leadingforlife.wordpress.com/sponsor/

This is such a great cause.  Today, I had a phone conversation with one of the girls who we’re given a scholarship to — she’s a part of a church that are doing some really innovative things in Bucharest and as a result, changing their city.  People are becoming Christians and young people are experiencing true and deep life change.  Her name is Diana and she wanted me to thank you for your sponsorship and investment in her leadership potential.

Final planning meeting yesterday. Final training ride this morning. And most importantly, packing list finalised.  Here’s what we’ve got so far:

spare inner tubes (3)
inner tube patches
lock
old sheets (for bike transport on trailer back from France)
water bottles
energy snacks (currently thinking about using these)
passport (first time to travel on the British one!)
money
insurance card
YHA card
overnight bag to go in support vehicle
maps
helmet
lights
sunglasses
padded shorts
clip-in shoes
book
playing cards (beans!)
iPod
travel towel
electrolyte powder
sunscreen
pannier bag

Have we missed anything?

Rachel had her magic beans. I have my magic shoes.

Last night, we went out for our final long-ish training ride before we head off. Al (my cycling guru) has been very generous and is not only letting me borrow her super fast road bike for the ride next week but she’s also letting me use her clip-in shoes. I tried them out last night and they were… magic.

The idea is that the bits on the bottom of your shoes clip into the pedals meaning that you get power both on the downward push AND the upward pull. It generally makes you more energy efficient and it makes you FAST!  With the help of the magic shoes, we did 17 miles through the Oxfordshire countryside in record time.

Zi-Su wishes his shoes were magic.

On Saturday, we set out for what was meant to be our longest cycle ride of our training.  A friend was having his birthday party at Royal Ascot so we thought that the 40 miles journey there and back (80 miles in total) would be good training for the journey that we have ahead of us.

I personally faced the day with a bit of trepidation.  The route planner said that the journey was a 9/10 difficulty.  The most we had done before was 7/10 and that was hard.  Thanks to my cycling guru, Al, I was using her much speedier bike which had tires a third the width of my current bike.  While excited by the prospect of speed, I feared the higher potential of coming off the bike.  With fears in check, we set off on what would become a comedy of errors.

Our first setback was remedied by a minor brake adjustment that was only possible because of a kind passing cyclist who stopped to help. (Lesson Learned: I need to learn some basic bicycle maintenance)

We carried on for another 45 minutes or so and as we were coming through a lovely village, Zi-Su’s tire had a puncture.  Nothing short of brute force would get the tire off and as the sky started to spit rain, we contemplated who we could call to pick us up.

However, our perseverance prevailed, the tire came off, the puncture was fixed, and 30 minutes later, we were off again.  (Lesson Learned: Always carry a spare inner tube.)

Our Google map directions sent us off into absolutely stunning scenery.  Rolling hills covered in rapeseed, wheat, flowers… it was amazing.  We pedaled along quite happily until we approached a junction.  An unmarked road.  To the left, a big hill.  To the right, a down hill.  Google Maps was useless as it failed to name the road.  We asked 3 different passing cyclists who were unable to help and thus we made our best guess and turned left.  As we started cycling, the road started going up and up and up.  In that time, I discovered that the lowest gears on my bike weren’t engaging.  So about halfway up, I started pushing my bike.  And even pushing my bike was hard work.  And while the crest of the hill gave us amazing views, it also confirmed that we had made a wrong turn, rendering our Google Map directions useless.  So with a vague idea of the direction of Ascot, we kept pedaling south. Imagine the relief when we headed into a village, stopped at a garage, and the man had heard of the road we were searching for!  With renewed vigor, we got back on our bikes and started pedaling.  By this time, we were already well past our expected arrival time at Ascot.  (Lesson Learned: Bring a map)

Back on track and with about 15 miles to go, we pedalled faster to make up for our lost time.  As we headed out of a village, I saw a sign that said ‘Ford’.  As we came around the bend, we saw a river cutting across the road and I realised why the sign had been there.

While Zi-Su saw this as a great photo opportunity, I did not see it as such.  He removed his shoes and carried his bike across.

I searched for an alternative, finding a foot bridge a bit further down.  After manuevering my bike through a kissing gate, I then walked it through a pasture (complete with animals) and then had to get it over a stile.  With Zi-Su’s help, we lifted the bike over and as it was coming down, the clips on my pannier bag broke.  Not sure whether to laugh or cry, I now no longer had means of carrying all of my possessions.  We loaded as much as we could into Zi-Su’s bag and then bungeed my bag onto my rack. (Lesson Learned: A £2 bargain on ebay will eventually let you down)

Carrying on, we started seeing signs for Ascot — and while in our hearts we were excited, our bodies started letting us down.  We had brought provisions and water for a 3 hour journey.  We were now nearing our sixth hour and Google Maps had sent us onto a main road where cars were going 70 miles/hour and there was no cycle lane.  Cursing Google Maps, we soldiered on.  (Lesson Learned: Plan for eventualities)

We finally arrived to Royal Ascot—sweaty, tired, and in cycling gear. It did not escape our notice that everyone else was in top hats and tails or expensive dresses and hats.  Our friends were very gracious, bringing us our posh clothes, feeding us food, and forgiving our tardiness.

Needless to say, we got the train home.

This Tuesday was our next short training ride. Inspired by Sara’s comment that Churchill was not hilly after all we decided to go north and conquer those hills – again for Sara. Can’t be that bad! – oh boy…

While we were cycling along I remembered a ‘car game’ that we used to play in the old days… last year. In German it’s called “Stadt-Land-Fluss”, which means City-Country-River. The idea is to think of names starting with a certain letter from different categories as fast as possible before the others do. So for example Paris, Peru, Po (that’s a river in Italy!), Panda and Pinocchio.  The mobile version that my mates came up with was to name cities starting with a letter and squeeze our heads until one can’t.

Long story short (if that’s still possible) as we travelled along the side of the road we threw names at each other – or to be more accurate ‘into the wind’. It was more like:
-Ohio! -What?! -Ohiiiiooo!! -That’s a state! -What?! -Thaat’s a staaate!! -Oh…

As we travelled around the world in our heads and quite thankfully around the beautiful fields north of Woodstock in our legs the miles added up and so did the minutes. (We discovered that according to our combined geographical aptitude there seems to be no city in the USA starting with ‘E’.)

It was funny to hear the repetitive soundtrack whenever a hill was coming up at the end of the road. We seamlessly transitioned from fierce competition and discussion to silence – the crescendo boom of wind as we gather momentum on the last stretch, staccato gear clicking and steady andante breathing with occasional groaning.

Once on the top everything was back to normal… Kingston! -Kuala Lumpur! -Kitzbühl! -That’s not a city! -It is! It has a train station!

On Saturday, I headed off into the Oxfordshire countryside without Zi-Su but accompanied by three lovely friends.  Two of them are training for a 90-mile ride from Oxford to Cambridge so we were all keen to get lots of miles under our wheels.

Thanks to the guidance of Cycle-Route, we headed off on the North Oxford Circular by River and Canal Cycle Route.  We didn’t get very far before we were all glad that none of us were on road bikes — the terrain was very rocky.  As we headed into Port Meadow, our progress was stopped by a rather large herd of cows that were lounging across the cycle path.  Unsure of what they’d do, we pushed our bikes around the herd, giving them quite a wide berth.  By the time we got to the Trout, I think we were all ready to be finished with the off-road ‘by river and canal’ cycling – thus, our ride turned into the ‘North Oxford Circular by Roads with Many Hills’.

If I had thought Zi-Su and I had done a lot of hills on Tuesday night, it was only preparation for Saturday.  Once we left the path by the river, the road began undulating.  We went up and down hill after hill for about 30 miles.  As the sun got hotter, our legs grew more tired.  But the encouraging thing for me was that I could really tell that my fitness levels have improved.  While the hills were challenging, I was able to get up all of them and my recovery time was pretty quick. I suppose that’s the benefit of training with someone who is inherently quicker than you and is riding a much faster bike.

What I can say about Saturday is that the weather was perfect and the added bonus of hills are the absolutely spectacular views of the surrounding countryside. We had a couple of rest stops, which allowed me to snap a few shots.  My favourite is the one of this postbox that was literally out in the middle of nowhere.  We were on a single lane road with no town, village, or house in sight.

All of our backroads popped us out very near where Zi-Su and I cycled on Tuesday night.  The final 8 miles of our ride were along a busy road that took us into Oxford.  We finished our time together with a lovely pub lunch at the Royal Oak.

So how did I ride with a large blister on my palm? Courtesy of the first aid kit, my hand was wrapped up in rather large bandage that made me look like a boxer and elicited some undeserved sympathy.  However, it did its job and cushioned my hand and as of this morning, my blister has completely gone.

Zi-Su and I will go out tomorrow night for another ride and on Saturday, we are planning to cycle to Ascot and back.  Between the going and coming, we’re going to the Ascot races for a friend’s birthday.  The tricky thing I’ve got to figure out is how to turn helmet hair into something suitable for the Ascot dress code…

Yesterday was our second short(er) ride on our training schedule. Our plan was to go up north to Woodstock and come back to Oxford through Kidlington – all in all around 16 miles so an easy ride after a long day of work.

A thick layer of misty clouds in facets of navy and gray made the day appear much older than it actually was – much to my distress having forgotten my lights. But the sun was faithful – subtle but faithful.

On the way into Woodstock we made an unexpected sharp left turn into Bladon. Why? To see the final ‘resting place’ of a man named Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill. Curiously enough we couldn’t find Sir Winston among all the Churchills at first in spite of his stone being marked by poppy wreaths. I guess I expected something very big and impressive. It was “very British” – also no profound words, no poem or psalm. Just a name…

When we got to Woodstock Sara realized that one carrot, two stalks of celery, hummus and Ryvita (aka Sara’s lunch) might not take her through the ride. I was getting hungry too in spite of my equivalent to 20 carrots, 2 hummus pots and Ryvita with a solid layer of butter (no celery please) so we stopped by Coop. 15 minutes later with half a baguette, Danish salami and bites of a healthy bar with raisins and all sorts of grainy things in our bellies we carried on into the chilly but nice evening.

It was good to know that I could handle baguette and salami in the middle of a ride. France, here I come! (not sure about cheese though.) Sara started to have a side cramp but that was after we laughed really hard for some reason I can’t remember.

In Kidlington we decided that 16 miles were too easy (seriously!) so we decided to make another sharp left turn and backtrack the route of our first training ride. That meant that the couple of long and smooth downhills would be now looong and brutal. But if that’s what stands between this handlebar and the only way for 6 young leaders to come to Leading for Life ain’t no mountain high enough!

We sucked it up and pushed one pedal after the other.
I must say I was impressed by Sara’s determination to not quit.

Thankfully the sun was faithful till the end. So was the baguette.