Ride to work - 61.4 miles

Felt better than I thought after getting home as I was expecting the first homeward leg to be a bit more of a drain, although the power meter has made a difference, even with a wobbly crank (more on that one later). The journey to work and back always seems very interesting from the aspect of driver mentality within London compared to the rest of the country. I was called a "f***ing p**k" once and cut up twice, all for riding my bike in accordance with the highway code.... nice eh ?

But, it gets the hours in (improves my sanity) and once I'm out of London the rest of the ride is quite nice, so nice I will be investigating a longer route (and more quite) for the return journey. Setting off early in the morning ensures you have less of the 4x4's, BMW X5's and rust buckets to try and knock you off or kill you with fumes....

Today I tried the first of my masks that I have bought to ride with, once in a high traffic area, which is a near chemical biological protection mask. The filtering is P3 (you get P1-P3 with P3 filtering out the smallest particles) so it seems to get rid of all the soot from the busses quite well and better than the screwfix special, which is a P2. The mask filtered out everything and for the whole journey I could not smell anything, appart from when I lifted it up for a drink.

The mask did make it more difficult to breath in slightly and was a bit uncomfortable around the nose as the fitting seems to be for when you are not gasping for air with your mouth wide open. Wearing the mask could only be done for upto 45min to an hour before it would need emptying (water) and your nose re-adjusting back. But, I'd rather breath through a mask than the inner London smog, ozone and whatever else is released into the air. Later on I'll post the pictures and a better review.

This week (last 7 days) I have managed to get in 9:45 on the bike with a TSS of 766 and a kCal burn of 9,025 (at 22%). Nice weekend ahead and a gentle club run for a recovery.