Last year's London to Brighton ride was well planned and trained for - I was out and off-road every Saturday morning for months, was cycling to work a good few times a week, and even left the pub early on the Saturday without drinking to get home in time for some pasta carbo-loading and a good nights sleep. Well that was last year.

After Green Day, we managed to get home around 1am and had to be up after only about four hours sleep, especially after having spent most of yesterday afternoon/evening on my feet. And the lack of training this year probably didn't help either to tackle the 54 miles of road between Clapham and Brighton, or so I thought.

Despite my training schedule (or lack thereof) this year, I still managed to knock 15 minutes off my race time compared to that of last year. Which just goes to show how much training does, or doesn't, help. To put it better into perspective, we did start the ride an hour earlier than last year, which meant we had to deal with an hour's less congestion - which made all the difference. But still, 15 minutes less than 2009.

After the ride, we hang around on the beach front for a while, grabbed some fish 'n chips in the sun, then got the shuttle bus back to London, which didn't take too long. The cycle ride home from Clapham was anything but pleasant - just when my ass/legs thought they were done with the saddle and peddling, along comes another 4 miles home. And just to add more salt to the wound, so to speak, got another 56 mile ride next Sunday - the London Bikeathon. Not exactly sure what I was thinking when I signed up for that one!