April 2020. There are squatters all over Clapham Common!

As in, the exercise type, rather than a mass of people occupying an area of land that they don't have lawful permission to use! Never before in my life have I ever seen a sea of humans squatting in one park, all distanced a minimum of 2m apart. Quite the sight. When we emerge from lockdown (here's hoping it's in 2020...), Clapham is going to be full of people walking around with massive quads. In amongst all the squatting, I did manage to find my own little quiet spot on the Common, I took the opportunity to capture a shot of me with my new riding buddy. The pic shows us in our usual formation, he's amazing at matching my pace on rides, but almost impossible to out sprint in the final stretch. Check him out below.

Me and my new cycling buddy. Very reliable.

Similarly to March, coronavirus continues to make training for an endurance cycle ride slightly tricky, but not impossible. Thankfully, at the time of writing, government guidance still encourages people to get out and exercise once a day – this makes a huge difference to mental health, I can’t imagine not being able to escape once a day for a run or cycle. Whilst the mileage hasn’t been huge from either Dan or me, it’s been mega to get the pedals turning on a regular basis. We’re lucky to have plenty of time, 14 months and counting down, before the ride. This means we can keep ticking over for now, with a view to building up the miles later in the year.

So, how does the future look? Well, we did have a plan to set ourselves a challenge on a monthly basis, but some of our ideas have royally gone out the window because of lockdown! They do say that ‘he who plans early, plans twice…!’. However, no virus is going to beat us, and we’re going to start setting monthly challenges from May onwards, they will just have to be slightly adjusted to ensure we’re acting responsibly and in accordance with government guidance.

All about the social distancing!

In any case, we’re all about the positivity, being stuck indoors means we can focus on the non-physical preps. Away from the cycling, we’ve been busy developing our social media presence on various platforms. Now, safe to say that neither of us is a tech ninja, so it’s been a steep learning curve! Thus far we are up and running on Instagram, and will be posting on there a few times a week, check out our content! Next up is Facebook and Twitter, the latter we have never even seen, so let’s see how that works out…Any social media gurus feel free to get in touch!

May challenge coming shortly, keep an eye out for updates.