London Cyclist

How long does it take you to do a loop of Regents Park or Richmond Park? (£500 gift card up for grabs)

Andreas · · 58 Comments

Update: I’m opening this up to Richmond Park too after feedback in the comments and to make it easier for people to enter.

When the Trek Madison 3.1 road bike first arrived at my house I set my sights on Regents Park. I wanted to do a loop of the outer circle to see how long it would take me.

Now, to end our road bike week with a bang, we’re running a little competition with a big prize. To enter you’ll need to record a loop around the outer circle of Regent’s Park or around Richmond Park. Here are the conditions:

Regent’s Park

Regents park start stop position explanation

  1. Pedal up and stop at the set of traffic lights located on the south side of the park.
  2. You’ll need to start from the stationary position
  3. Set your GPS device (Garmin/Mobile phone/Other that tracks your position) and press the go button
  4. Start pedalling and take the loop around Regents Park
  5. When you reach the same position you set off from hit the stop button
  6. Upload the stats to your favourite site (Garmin Connect/Sports-Tracker etc)
  7. Share a link to your stats in the comments below
  8. Note that the link you share will need to show your ride around the park so we can verify you followed the same route as everyone else.

Richmond Park

richmond-park-loop

Click here for the route around Richmond Park. Similar rules apply to that of Regents Park.

The winner will be randomly selected from the entries. Why not pick the fastest time you might ask? Well, although it’s going to be interesting to see what times people produce, selecting the fastest time will be difficult to verify. This is because people are using different devices that will provide different readings and data can easily be manipulated later on the computer. We are interested in seeing the real results, not the modified ones.

To provide this prize London Cyclist has teamed up with the Post Office to offer the randomly chosen entry a One4all Giftcard worth £500!

For details on where this can be redeemed please check the Giftcard website.

I’d like to thank the Post Office for providing such a great gift and I’d also like to give a quick heads up to their great deals on savings.

There are of course some obvious conditions. It is only one entry per person, the winner is chosen by assigning a number to each entry in the order it is submitted and then a random number is chosen using random.org. The corresponding person is then contacted on the email address they use to leave a comment and as long as that person replies in a reasonable time frame they are allocated the prize. Once the winner has been contacted it will be announced in a new blog post and by updating this blog post. London Cyclist and the Post Office cannot be held responsible if you fall over/hurt yourself while recording your time – this is your own responsibility! All winners are final. We will reject any entries we deem have not followed the instructions outlined on this page.

The competition starts now and will be running until 10pm on Thursday 8th of September.

Best of luck to everyone and look forward to seeing what times everyone produces! (I’ll be revealing my time, as well as the winner in the blog on Friday 9th!)

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Denz says

    Dont get me wrong, this is a good idea for a contest and i like it but Regents park is quite a busy park to do this kind of thing, im just concern about some crazy cyclist risking their safety by pedaling the arse off just to get a quick lap. its also quite short for a challenge (only 2.7miles).

    Richmond Park I think is the best venue to do this contest because there are much fewer cars driving around #(much safer for cyclist), its much longer (6.7 miles) and the best thing about it is the terrain is a mixture of up and down hills with great scenery.

    if your going to do another contest I recommend Richmond park, if you do, you can count me in.

    good luck and keep those news letter coming!

    Reply

    • David Walters says

      Richmond Park is a whole lot further out of the way for lots of Londoners though. At least The Regent’s Park is central.

      Reply

    • Amoeba says

      RSK 02/09/2011 at 12:05 pm #

      “Pity it’s just for people with posh phones 🙁 ”

      Unless I’ve missed something, apparently it isn’t. Looking at the Garmin Connect website it even includes my lowly Etrex GPS, and probably any GPS that can be encouraged to export data to a GPX file. I have to admit that I have never used the stopwatch feature on this GPS in anger, so to speak.

      Since it’s not a race, the real question, is: Why not pick someone from random who uploaded a track of cycling anywhere in the UK? Otherwise it needlessly discriminates against anyone outside the M25, and I suspect that not only Londoners read the blog.

      The reason I’ll bother is that I’ll be in the close vicinity for the CEoGB launch on Saturday [GB Cycling Embassy to launch in London 3rd Sept http://t.co/0TJvIoX%5D and if I’m up to it, the Mayor of London’s SkyRide on Sunday [I intend to cycle all the way in and out on each day, a round trip of ~55 miles].
      However, I don’t normally venture into inner London, because I am based in Surrey.

      [Link to CEoGB stolen gratuitously from Dave42’s blog.]

      Reply

  3. Andreas says

    RE: Someone hurting themselves – hence why it’s not a fastest lap competition. It’s just a taking part competition.

    RE: Richmond Park – have added to the competition!

    Reply

  4. Andreas says

    RE: This is just good for those with expensive phones. Have you tried Sports Tracker on your phone? Works on a lot of Nokias

    Reply

  5. New York Steve says

    Sounds like fun. But could you do a similar run for us here in New York. I’m thinking of Central Park.

    Reply

    • Andreas says

      Hi Steve, good suggestion. Unfortunately the gift voucher is for UK high street stores. None the less, be interesting to find out different peoples times! Maybe I should suggest it to some NYC bloggers!

      Reply

  12. Steve D says

    I’d like to give this a go at lunch time one day this week. I work near the Richmond Gate to Richmond Park, is it ok to start / end the loop here?

    Reply

  14. Seb says

    After a week of illness followed by a boozy lazy week in Barcelona followed by an enormous wedding (excuses, excuses), I still decided it would be a good idea to push it as hard as i could for a lap. Middle split on this otherwise gentle pootle.
    http://connect.garmin.com/activity/112128692

    My heart and lungs weren’t happy! Daft sod that I am, I didn’t want to go slow. My body had other ideas.

    Reply

    • Stuart says

      First lap was the only one I did the start/stop thing on – and it was an abysmal 27:26 – really slow – again I blame wind, rain, traffic and belly…

      Reply

  22. el-gordo says

    With all this talk of road bikes I eventually bit the bullet and bought one last weekend.

    Therefore, I thought it would be interesting to do a comparison in lap times between my trusty hybrid, which weighs about the same as an ocean going liner, and my new fancy bike. Both laps were done today in roughly the same conditions.

    Lap 1 (Hybrid): http://j.mp/pxqmnN

    Lap 2 (Road Bike): http://j.mp/qoNx1z

    So a 1 minute difference on the two laps equating to roughly 1mph, which wasn’t quite what I was expecting. In fairness I picked up a Police car on the quickest downhill section on my second lap and as I didn’t want to fly past him in a 20mph zone I had to scrub off some speed, so that may have cost me 30s or so.

    This has taught me two things. 1) I am not going Mach 2 on my road bike, as previously thought and 2) I felt I cycled quite quickly but looking at other times I clearly don’t.

    Still love the new bike though, just feels a pleasure to ride.

    Reply

  30. John Rice says

    Here is my effort:-

    http://connect.garmin.com/activity/112831669

    Done this tonight on a detour from my usual commute home Westminster to North London.

    I may have come up a few metres short this was due to a combination of red light fellow cyclist just ahead of me so decided to press stop a bit earlier then brake to avoid a crash.

    Keep up the good work with the blog

    Cheers

    John

    Reply

  31. Hugh says

    8min 43secs on my way home tonight on a Dahon Mu Uno single speed folding bike (includes 20 secs faffing about trying to get my Blackberry back in my rucsac at the start). Well chuffed with my performance, but I was lucky with the traffic lights and admit to drafting a couple of roadies on the way through.

    http://runtastic.com/en/sport-sessions/5209072-biking-2011-09-08

    Great idea for a competition, and am really pleased it prompted me to find a really neat GPS training app for my BB – thanks Andreas, keep up the blogging good work

    Reply

  32. Mike says

    Regents loop. Well, don’t think I’ve won, but maybe won amongst Brompton riders.. and then only if you remove about 90 seconds when I errrr… lost my way!

    Maybe I can get a special prize for the most bizarre GPS track? iPhone had a big wobble, and having it in my trouser pocket seems to have made it think I’m some kind of kangroo…

    http://www.everytrail.com/view_trip.php?trip_id=1277152

    Went around again today and would have beaten my time but for the battery dying. Drafted a bloke on a very nice Pertorius titanium peice of bike prawn too.

    Reply

  33. Sue says

    This is obviously a bloke thing. I can’t see a response from any females. Maybe I will give it a go at the weekend, but not sure I’ve got the right equipment.

    Reply

  34. Brian says

    I only started timing myself around Regents Park towards the end of the summer. My best is 07:28. I did obviously hit green lights the whole way round.

    I’ve read on other forums of records nearer the lower end of 6 minutes. Maybe with a time trial bike and a death-wish.

    Reply

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