I had thought that I might add a circuit of Finsbury Park to my ride this morning, but then remembered that there is both a funfair and a circus there at the moment, meaning that quite a lot of the pathways are shut and I wouldn't get a clear ride around the outer road, so I just headed straight for the office on my normal route.
For the first time since I started cycling again this year, I managed to get up the hill on Endymion Road and into the park (and then carry on) without having to stop to catch my breath. However, I realised as reached the park that, while I had managed to turn on my Garmin sports watch thingy before I set off (so it could locate satellites and wotnot - we're getting very hi-tech here, y'know), I had then failed to press the start button as I moved off. So, when I got to the park, I pushed the start button - some data is better than none. As I wasn't stopping, I did it while I was still moving, so I didn't really get the chance to look at what the watch was doing, and I think this was the start of my confusion.
I carried on along my normal route without there being much to write home about for a long while. I'm getting a lot more comfortable in traffic again, and that makes me quicker. It's very difficult to properly "train" for cycling when you are at the whims of the traffic and traffic lights and buses and potholes and so on, but it's better to cycle than not to cycle, of course.
Once I was headed into Shoreditch and towards the city, I got to the point at Leonard Circus (that's not the same circus that's in Finsbury Park!) where they are replacing the junction and had to get off the bike. However, whereas the other day I was able to wheel my bike along the pavement around the junction, this time they had blocked the pavement off as well, which meant a five minute walking detour around streets which are one way the "wrong" way before I could get back on track.
Eventually, I reached the office and, as I pressed the stop button on the Garmin, I noticed that the time said 58 minutes. Now, even when I was a beginner cyclist on my first ever ride to work, walking across every junction and crying at the sight of a bus, I don't think I took 58 minutes to get to there. Remember as well, that I hadn't even set the timer going until I was a kilometre into the ride (I know it was a kilometre because it was the point I would have swum to on Tuesday - see this post!), which means the first 4 or 5 minutes of my ride weren't recorded. That would mean it had taken me over an hour to get in, which couldn't be right (partly because I knew roughly what time I left the house and that was less than an hour previously).
I then thought about factoring in the walking detour around Shoreditch, but that still was only about 5 minutes, which kind of cancels out the missing first 4 or 5 minutes of the journey and takes us back to the 58 minutes on the watch. I think (although I'll need to do some technical jiggery-pokery later to find out for sure) that part of the problem might be that the watch hadn't cleared my 20 minute run from yesterday, which means I took 38 minutes (i.e. plus the first kilometre and minus the detour), which still seems a bit on the high side, given that it's about the same as my (uphill) journey home after swimming and cycling in on Friday. Oh well, I'll just have to redeem myself on the way home!
My cycle to work this morning was 8.81km, making my total to date 65.95km.
*If a picture of me wearing a running shirt can be this terrible, then think how awful, embarrassing and hilarious a pic of me in my swimming hat will be - and remember I'm willing to put that up here, on the public interweb, when my Justgiving donations for Marie Curie Cancer Care reach £100. You have the power to make this happen! Just click on the Justgiving button on the right hand side and follow the instructions to make your donation.
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