Last weekend saw a group of riders including one of my UKCycleChat colleagues take on wlondoncycling’s ‘The One’, and in honour of them completing this awesome challenge, I thought I would write a quick ride story from my attempt to conquer this beast of a route from a couple of months back.
First things first, what is ‘The One’? Well put simply it’s a near sixty mile ride through the surrey hills aiming to hit all of the noteworthy climbs in the area and tops out at nearly 7000ft of climbing.
A few weeks ago saw myself and a fellow Roly head to the south coast at silly o clock on a Sunday morning to catch a ferry to the Isle of Wight for the annual Isle of Wight Randonnee.
And boy we weren’t alone!!
On arriving at the ferry terminal to purchase our tickets we were greeted with a sea of lycra clad men and women in various shades of garish outfits also waiting to board and undertake this challenge. Once on the ferry you couldn’t move for cyclists and as for trying to get a much needed coffee, well you were waiting longer than Team Sky have been waiting for a monument win (though as with Team Sky we did get one eventually)!!
It was the best of times (out riding my bike), it was the worst of times (hills), it was the age of wisdom (taking it nice and steady), it was the age of foolishness (pushing too hard), it was the epoch of belief (not just riding my bike, but in the sunshine too!), it was the epoch of incredulity (how is it possible we are still going up?), it was the season of Light (I can do this), it was the season of Darkness (no I can’t), it was the spring of hope (Ahh Almond Croissant), it was the winter of despair (The dreaded ‘Bonk’).
The opening paragraph of Charles Dickens classic ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ seems to sum up this weekends rides pretty well for me.
So lets start at the beginning.
The Roly Rouleur 