Blog About Sam's Thoughts And Riting Diary

For some reason I have put off writing this blog post. That I cycled from one end of the country to the other hasn't sunk in. I hope it will soon. The journey  started on Wednesday morning, leaving home at 08:10 to cycle to work in Greenwich. 9.5 hours later, with my mind having been completely occupied by LEJOG the entire working day, I headed to Wimbledon to stay with Hugo, in Wimbledon. It's a pretty direct route from Greenwich, heading to E lephant and C astle then following CS7. The sheer volume of cyclists is like nothing I've ever seen; it was akin to the biggest sportive I could imagine in this country. Quite phenomenal really. There were bikes of all sorts, from the whippets on their carbon frames to the pannier-laden commuter losing the fight against the wind. I was stronger than most - I'd have been worried if not! - passing huge pelotons at a time like they were standing still, eventually reaching the faster guys at the front. Among...

In less than 72 hours I will be on my bike traversing Cornwall. Today, however, I have been crossing the t's and dotting the i's in preparation. Before I leave I want to round up the second half of my training. Let's see what happened. I posted the  first part  of my training around six weeks ago. The second part is much the same but with bigger numbers. Churning out 200 mile weeks for fun As with pretty much any endeavour ever, consistency is key. On the face of it the mileage looks monstrous, particularly when my cycling experience is taken into account, and well it is, but I got into a groove and everything fell into place. The highlight of those three weeks was undoubtedly the 25 mile time trial (the red circle in the upper right corner of the picture above). A full 84 seconds quicker than my last, and first, TT! The westerly wind (coming from  the west) was probably advantageous, due to the finish line being to the east of the start. Still, a lot...

There is nothing quite like the drama of watching England during a tournament knockout match. France '98 was my earliest memory, and there's been little to celebrate since. Last night, however, was more than a victory; it was an exorcism of so many penalty shootout heartbreaks. I can remember losing to Argentina in '98, Portugal in '04 and '06, and Italy in 2012, and I still can't quite believe we beat Colombia last night, especially after Henderson's telegraphed pen was saved. The England football team provides me with so much hope and optimism every other summer (except for 2008) that always leads to despair. Looking back as an adult I wonder whether the nation's inflated expectations, encouraged by the cruel media, are partly to blame. Reaching the quarter-finals, while apparently not good enough, was probably about par for how good we were in relation to the rest of the teams. How ridiculous that I, as a seven-year-old, saw this in...

It has been just over two months since my post  rounding up a running-focused training block, which culminated in a PB at Hastings Half Marathon. I then had a duathlon on the Sunday, where I came third!, took a few days off/easy, then my training for Land’s End to John O’Groats began on April Fools’ Day. (Make of that what you will!) Check out the average speed... Having set a marker of where my fitness on the bike lay, after months of predominantly focusing on running and only cycling a few times a week, the plan was essentially to cycle as many miles as I could in preparation for Lejog. My second-ever 200 mile week! There were a few long and/or hard rides in this four-week period, but none that I am more proud of than this: 20mph for almost four hours! Averaging 20mph has been in my mind since I started cycling. There are a boatload of factors that affect average speed, but 20mph can be thought as a great intermediate goal; initially it was ...