The route for the Olympic Cycling Road Race has just been announced by the London 2012 Organising Committee, and it looks to be quite a ride.
If you've got the legs (as well as a bicycle), you could try the route yourself, before the professionals have even had a chance to squeeze into their Lycra shorts.
The route starts and finishes on The Mall, encompasses six London boroughs, passes through Richmond Park and Bushy Park, and takes in a decent amount of the Surrey countryside.
From reading about the route, it may have dawned on you that this ride will likely take the amateur cyclist more than a day. The Olympic course stretches 156 miles for men, and 87 miles for women.
For the athletes, it's estimated that the men will take about six hours to complete their course, while the women will likely take between three and four hours.
Plan it carefully and you can pick off small parts at a time, enjoying great swathes of the Surrey countryside in the process, as well as delightful parts of inner and outer London.
As you'd expect, the route is no walk in the park.....it's a demanding cycle ride through some challenging terrain, so plan ahead to work out what you can manage with the time you have available.
Part of the course involves a ten mile circuit incorporating the National Trust's
Box Hill, before the final push back to London.
If you do try the course, or parts of it, be sure to take all
the usual safety precautions when cycling on the roads.
A pdf file showing the entire route can be found
here.
Now get on your bike and go for gold!
