Ring of confidence?

The Le Mans preparation ride was greeted by one of the first true days of summer. The occassion was marked with a trip to the summit of Box Hill just days before the Olympic road race and just hours before it was due to be closed to the public.An added task for the day was handing over the Optician Awards charity cheque to Vision Aid Overseas. The team gathered at the foot of the Hill and Fiona from VAO duly met us at the top for a marathon photo session.The climb posed little difficulty and the newly-laid road surface was a pleasure to cycle up.

The scale of the Olympic camp on Box Hill is pretty big and it will be very interesting to see how it all works out of the day. Us lesser mortals will be viewing the race on the flat. Once the cheque had been handed over our ride took us down a very fast Pebble Coombe, across the A25 and down into the rolling Surrey countryside. It was clear that some team members had really improved with Sue keeping up a great pace despite having completed a 90 miler at the weekend. Endurance over speed as ever,I'm beginning to think the Le Mans 24hr Velo may just have been created for her. Andrea also impressed leading the way on a sparking new-from-the-shop Specialized Roubaix. The team pushed along at a reasonable pace disrupted only by Chris' Blackberry and a missed turn or two and all in close-ish formation. Apart from (yet another) broken spoke on Matt bike all went well. As the sun beat down and rolling terrain turned to full one climbs (see the profile below) the team decided not too push to hard. With injuries to protect and appointments to meet it was decided that we had done enough to assess our fitness and a trip to the pub was called for.

There's nothing to get too excited about in the numbers. The most impressive part of the ride was the maximum achieved on the descents. In total about 27 miles in just over two hours but it gives the team foot for thought as to how the main event is going to be handled. Will Paul go for the full 24hours? Just how fast is David? Answers on a postcard please.