Rapha Festive 500 - Park Life tour: Day 1, Richmond Park

Stats
Kms ridden: 80
Kms left: 420

Weather: Overcast with sunny intervals; 8 degC

Parks: Richmond; Wimbledon; Norwood Country

Route on Strava


Another year, another Festive 500. It's great to get in with the spirit of this event, which has been going for 10 years now. I know some folks are a bit sceptical about it and aren't into this sort of global fad of riding 500km between Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve.

I have to say I have a penchant for it because it's a sure fire way of getting me out of the house to ride my bike every day - especially as I'm at an age where even sniffing at food makes me pile on calories.
So I am in favour of anything that counters the middle-age spread - especially at a time when the Christmas binge is de rigueur.

Sawyer's Hill, Richmond Park

My theme for last year's Festive 500 was disused railway lines.  This year it is parks. So I will aim to get around city parks, country parks and national parks.

Today was quite straight forward as I visited parks not too far from home.

Christmas Eve is always a difficult day as I have to fit it in around last minute Christmas preparations, so my mileage tends to be fairly average.

I was glad to get in 50 miles by doing a few laps of Richmond Park and then making tracks via Wimbledon Park, and passing my local South Norwood Country Park to reach home.

I would have like to have done Bushy Park, but time caught up with me.

As usual, there were quite a few people riding laps of Richmond Park,  though numbers were a little down partly due to Christmas commitments I imagine, as well as a dodgy weather forecast.

We've had a lot of rain recently, and today also had its share. Throughout the ride, the Kingston side of Richmond Park had angry skies above it. Everywhere looked grim, and there was a sense that the rain would come bucketing down at any moment. Conversely, on the Roehampton side of the park everywhere was bathed in glorious sunshine. Commonly, both sides were pretty cold and I didn't even get hot as I huffed and puffed up Sawyer's Hill and Broomfield Hill.

Having a break at Pembroke Lodge, Richmond Park

The cold weather was a little downer on the day as I hadn't been expecting it, and I had become accustomed to warm rain!

The forecast for this week is once again changeable, so I may also amend my itinerary to benefit from the least unpleasant weather. I guess that's a perk of having a parks-based theme. There are parks everywhere!

Here's hoping for nice weather for Christmas Day.


Related posts
Reflections on Rapha Festive 500

Why I like the Festive 500

One day one photo - 15: One day two running races

Saturday was a busy day for me. I left my house by bike and rode over to Wimbledon Park where I raced in the Surrey Road Relay Championships. Then I rode across London to Sparrows Den fields near West Wickham, and raced in the Will Bolton Cross Country Relays. Both races were roughly 4.5km and undulating, both were with my second-claim club, South London Harriers. One was on-road, one was off-road. Then I had a quick drink with my team-mates and rode home.

I slept well! As you can see from the photo, which is of our team at the Will Bolton Relays, I am not fully dressed to race. I had just arrived from Wimbledon at the time. There was only one other person as crazy as me to do the double - that was Ruth Hutton, pictured next to me. She had the good sense to drive across though, so was able to preserve her legs and do two very fast runs.

Why did I do two races in one day? I just saw it as a challenge. I have recently ramped up my run training, wanting to take it up a gear, so I thought that doing these two races would be a good challenge and also a way of making me stronger for future challenges, such as the Beachy Head marathon, which I am hoping to do next month.

The other thing is part of the mid-life crisis. I am conscious of the fact that in less than 6 months I will be 50 years old. I can hardly believe I have come this far! Things do get harder physically as you get older - you are more prone to lifestyle problems such as high cholesterol, type 2 diabetes and high blood pressure. You also need time to recover from physical efforts. About 10 or 15 years ago doing two races in a day would have been no big deal for me. But with age I had grown to feel this was possible any more. About a year ago, if I did a fast time at the 5km Park run on a Saturday I would need the whole day to recover! I was having to realise that I am no longer the athlete that I used to be. 

So with the sustained run training I have been doing this year I wanted to see if it really was still possible to do two fast 5km running races in a day with bike riding in between. And in fact, I seem to have passed the test. The time I did for the Wimbledon race was faster than what I did last year as well. So it is reassuring to think that maybe my fitness levels may not have declined as much as I thought. But I probably will sleep a lot longer, and I guess my legs will need a deeper and longer massage!