I Am Seb

Last night’s ride turned out to be awe­some fun, as it was pour­ing down mer­ci­lessly the whole time. As a res­ult, Hyde Park was thor­oughly deser­ted, and I enjoyed mean­der­ing across four miles of what is rap­idly becom­ing my favour­ite part of the city, passing only the occa­sional soggy jogger.

Getting home was even more fun, as I hadn’t real­ised there’s a reas­on­able down­hill gradi­ent along Bayswater Road. I man­aged to get from Queensway to Shepherd’s Bush in about five minutes, over­tak­ing (and gen­er­ally annoy­ing) a fair num­ber of buses along the way.

Weather’s look­ing about the same for this even­ing, and I’m think­ing of push­ing the route out to about 12 miles, assum­ing noth­ing else comes up.

This evening’s route is a fairly straight cir­cuit that runs along Bayswater Road, right along the North side of Hyde Park, before cut­ting in and zig-zagging back down to the South-East corner, out along through Kensington, before turn­ing back North again through Hammersmith, touch­ing the edge of Chiswick, and finally back home to the Bush.

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Total run is 10 miles, which I hope I can do between 6 and 7pm.

After nearly 10 years without doing any ser­i­ous cyc­ling, I finally went out and bought myself a new bike on Sunday. It’s a Specialized Hardrock Sport, which I’ve spent a bit of time adjust­ing and tun­ing — espe­cially repla­cing the stock tyres with inter­me­di­ates for a bit of road use.

Apart from spend­ing the upcom­ing bank hol­i­day week­end cyc­ling around Sussex with Tara, I’ve decided to plan (using the awe­some GMaps Pedometer) and cycle a 10 mile route every even­ing from now onwards (beer and social life per­mit­ting, obvi­ously). Tonight’s was the first, a run down through Chiswick, across the river into Kew, skirt­ing Barnes and over into Hammersmith before get­ting home after a good hour’s cycling.

It feels great to be back in the saddle, even if London’s drivers are a touch more aggress­ive than the more for­giv­ing souls that I grew up with in Brighton. I don’t mind admit­ting though, right now my legs feel like jelly!