June 21 L2B.......2L

Christophe and Cherry refuel in Brighton

Having repeated Sunday's ride on Tuesday as a bit of extra pre-Brighton ride training, and having taken it easy on the Saturday, I should have been confident and relaxed enough to get a good night's sleep but that didn't happen. Instead I lay awake listening to music and thinking that I might as well have listened to everyone else and gone for the 6am start time and not my favoured 8.30.

Anyway, Christophe picked me up at 7 as, having started a new job this week, he had a secure place to park up near the start and we added Cherry to our crew on the way. The start area was packed and Cherry and I joined the queue to start at 8.30 while Christophe waited for us on the other side of the start as he hadn't registered. We actually crossed the start line at 8.40 and it was immediately apparent why the others had suggested the early start. With the number of riders and the police on every junction ensuring red light observence along with managing traffic flow, progress was slow and halting. Skate marshalling skills enabled us to people slalom better than most and Cherry proved best at this disappearing into the distance after only a few miles when I got caught at a junction. This congestion was annoying, but worse was to come. About 12 miles in near Chipstead, the route went under a railway bridge and then turned right into gridlock. Obviously the number of cyclists that couldn't cycle up this hill had reached the point where those that were walking up had blocked the road to the extent that those that could cycle up it were unable to. Fortunately I had a map with be and after checking it and asking a couple of local spectators I found that if I continued along the road, took a right and then another right I could rejoin the route. So instead of having to walk slowly up a hill, I got to climb a lovely, well surfaced, wide, empty road. Result. By the point that I rejoined, the hill was over and people were riding again.

Unfortunately, I was unable to perform a similar trick at the next congestion spot which was near Nutfield. By the time I realised that forward progress had basically halted, it was too late to go back to the previous turn off. Several things happened during the over 30 minute to reach the top. I called Christophe who was a couple of miles behind to warn him, but without a map of his own it was impossible to divert him around it. Cherry walked past me up the side of the queue carrying her bike (I guess I passed her on my last diversion) - a tactic I soon employed.

I phoned Sparky to find that, along with Tanya and Quentin, he had arrived in Brighton before 10am, skating it in 3h45. At this point I had covered 20 miles in 2 hours and my plan to arrive in Brighton in time for the 1pm F1GP start was looking like a fail.

Finally we reached the top of the hill. The queue was caused my having to cross the A25 and the marshalls had to alternate traffic and cyclists. The route went straight across, but I turned left, then right and rode about 3 miles on another deserted road before rejoining the main route.

I caught up with Cherry after about 27 miles and we rode together for a while as we approached Turner's Hill, the second biggest climb on the way there. I had planned to stop at the top, but it was so crowded I changed my mind and pressed on.

The next section of road was mainly downhills and somewhere along here I hit over 42mph and also came across a few skaters, Angee who was sitting by the side of the road, Paul, who I slowed and chatted to and finally Ash as we approached Ditchling.

The climb up Ditchling started well and I was feeling better than the last time I tried it. However, with half the road covered with people pushing, my lack of a real low gear meant that by about 2/3rds of the way up I ran out of steam, and unlike last time, restarting wasn't really an option and I joined the walking hoards. Once at the top, I had half a powerbar and realised it was the first thing I'd eaten since breakfast. I set of again but had to stop almost immediately as my chain came off changing up to the big ring. That fixed, I set off again and Brighton was in sight. Ignoring the bike/car lanes signs I weaved through the traffic (safer than weaving through inexperienced cyclists) turned onto Madiera drive and crossed the finish at 1.20.

I then joined the crew of spectators that had come down from London to cheer the skaters and this crew gradually grew as more of our friends finished. Cherry finished just before 2 and Christophe shortly after that.

I had planned to start the return leg at 3, but as we'd arrived later in order to have a decent rest and get some food, we ended up leaving after 4. Our return route was different to avoid those still on the way down but ran basically parallel and slightly to the west of run down.

We hit the first climb up the A23 toward Devil's Dyke almost immediately and I was regretting the loss of my cap and gloves soon after as the sweat poured into my eyes without the cap to soak it up or the gloves to wipe it away.

Cherry reckoned the route home was more uphill, but I think it just felt that way due to tiredness. There were definitely some decent downhills as I hit 46.34mph on one of them. Most of the route was quiet roads, with the only really unpleasant stretch being the A272 between Botley and Ansty being a narrow main road with a long slow climb which made it difficult for motorists to pass.

We stopped for drinks just before Reigate and Cherry showed the elevation map on her GPS. I was puzzled as looking at it we appeared to have a mountain to climb. I was a bit puzzled, as when planning the route, I avoided Reigate hill as I knew how evil that would be, but I thought that the route I'd found round it was a relatively easy climb. Anyway we continued and the climb we took did indeed turn out to be too evil for me and I had to walk about 200m of it. Lovely view at the top though!

As we set off again, I finally realised what had happened. We hadn't gone the route that I had planned. Cherry had entered it slightly wrong on the GPS so we were now at the top of Reigate Hill. Oooops. Oh well, we carried on and were soon back on course riding along the lovely High Rd and then Portnalls Rd.

Before long we were into single figures of miles to go and our last obstacle to clear was the hundreds of Pakistanis in Tooting who were out celebrating their country's win in the Twenty20 cricket world cup.

We finally arrived at a now deserted Clapham Common at about 9.20 before heading back to the car and then home to showers, baths, food and recovery.

My figures for the trip were 112.96 miles, 8h17m53s, max speed 46.34mph, total climb 6672ft.