Training ride 3 (Day 1) : Brighton

I didn't get a chance to train again prior to the training ride on Saturday. Actually thats not strictly true - I could have done some training on Friday morning, but decided it would be prudent to conserve my strength for the weekend.

This training ride would not see the full-compliment of riders; Henry was busy in a rowing event, and Tim & John are both injured/ill. Also, Rich could only make Sunday.

However, on Saturday morning the remaining four set of from Guildford for Brighton. The weather was miserable, but the good news was it was miserable everywhere we went. It would have been really disappointing to hear that we had had a ride in a particular area only to find that the weather was much better somewhere else, but it really didn't seem to matter where we went, there was a constant damp demoralising drizzle. I have shamelessly used alliteration there so I can now mention my foaming friend Paul. After a couple of hours in the damp demoralising drizzle, foam flowed from friends cycling shorts!!! None of us could work out why (nor did we really want to think too hard about it), but plenty of theories were put forward. It was a great way to pass the time, and before we knew it we were in a place called Ditchling.

For those of you who have ever cycled the London to Brighton ride, the word "Ditchling" will probably be giving you some bad memories. Ditchling beacon is a hill which cuts Brighton off from the rest of the country. The one time I did London to Brighton, I had to walk a part of Ditchling, and I was actually quite looking forward to seeing if I could get up it after all this training! Ditchling is the third highest peak in the South Downs at 814ft, and the route we took rises 550ft in around 1 mile. It was (surprisingly) easier than I thought it was going to be; Leith Hill is harder....

In Brighton, we took the cycle lanes along the sea-front headed towards Worthing. It has to be said at this point that the cycle lanes are fantastic in Brighton. Unlike the ones in Guildford, the Brighton ones seem to be designed for people that are on bikes. This ought to be a design requirement for all cycle lanes.

Here we were lucky with the weather, as the wind was coming from the East, so we went quite
quickly across to Chichester. Then we turned up the A285 back to Guildford. This required us to go over Duncton Hill in the opposite direction to what we had done previously.

We were travelling a little slower than normal, but still managed nearly 110 miles in 7 hours which is not too bad. My first time properly over 100, and I felt strong afterwards.

Back to Chichester

John cycled down from Bishops Stortford to Guildford yesterday afternoon. He did really well, as it's 80+ miles and he was by himself.

He stayed with us on Friday night and then Paul joined us on Saturday so the three of us could cycle to Worthing via Chichester. John only wanted to go to Worthing where he was visiting family. I say "only", but Guildford to Worthing via Chichester is around 50 miles which is quite impressive the morning after an 80 mile bike ride the previous afternoon! Then Paul and I would head home, hopefully ending up between 90-100 miles.


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We set off around 6:45 after a breakfast and juice. We travelled down past CHASE and out towards Godalming then Haslemere. I dont recall cycling south on this road before. There were some great hills!! (although "great" wasn't a word I heard John using!). After 30 miles or so we stopped for 2nd breakfast at Singleton. I must have driven through it many times, but had never realised what a beautiful little village Singleton is.

I had Google'd a route into the Garmin around the back of Goodwood racecourse to avoid having to go through Chichester centre. Once again, I was really pleased with the Garmin under these circumstances. It was not an obvious route, and certainly not one that any of us had done before, but we found our way down to the A27 without incident. Then it was just a case of blasting along the A27 for 20 miles until we hit Worthing. This part of the trip was very quick due to the road being pretty flat.

At Worthing, about 1/2 mile from where we were dropping John off, we noticed Paul had a puncture. So we stopped and changed his tube and said farewell to John.

Paul and I were feeling great. 50 miles already, and we were doing fine. Just outside Worthing, coming up the A24, there is quite a long hill and we realised why we were feeling so good; the wind had been behind us on the way down!! It was tough going, and it took us pretty much the same amount of time to go 40 miles home as it did to go 50 miles down there! Although part of that was due to Paul getting another puncture, and us stopping to pump his tyre up a few times and eventually changing the tube again at Cranleigh.

When we eventually got home, I felt the best I've felt after a ride of that distance. Maybe I'll manage a ride tomorrow, although the weather forecast predicts snow.