Posted: Sun 18 Jul 2010, 6:27pm

Today saw the undertaking of the official London to Southend 59 mile route organised by Bike Events starting in East London\'s Victoria park and finishing in Southends Priory park.
The route is best described as undulating and was well thought out as the organisers managed to include quite a few of the rolling hills of Epping/Basildon and the outskirts of Raleigh,at around the 15 mile in mark the route changed direction and brought us into a ferocious headwind of around 15mph which was a persistant issue and a fellow rider began to tow onto the back of me riding in my slipstream to shelter himself from the headwind which I didnt really have a issue with as I expected to rotate this order so that we could both make use of this benefit,but I sure was wrong!.
A further 15 miles down the road and I glanced back to check if the rider was still behind me and to my suprise a train had formed behind me of 7 riders all riding at the pace I was setting and use my slipstream to minimize their efforts and vulnerability to the wind,it was at this point I was starting to get frustrated as they were reaping all the benefits and I was doing all the work taking the full force of the wind and having to keep to a cadence of 70-85 revolutions per minute to maintain the 19mph average that was constantly being lowered by the elements,I kept looking behind expecting another rider to come to the front but it just didnt happen,so in the end I just couldnt be bothered to try and force them to assist me and although leading the front for nearly 40 miles across the open fields taking the full force of the wind was sapping on my energy levels I was still feeling strong and decided just to leave them to do as they pleased.
I turned into Southend priory 2 hours and 55 minutes after departing London which I was very pleased with considering how bad the wind was and still felt pretty strong afterwards which was a good sign,as I was winding down in the finishing area two guys came up to me and shook my hand and said \" we just wanted to thank you for towing (leading) us along for the last 40 miles or so and if we were feeling better we would of alternated\" which I actually thought was quite nice of them as I am sure they would have.
All in all it was a great ride,the weather was pretty good in general apart from the wind factor which didnt really cause a major issue on the whole and we took in some great scenery along the way.