The founders - how we met

For the first blog post on this site, it made sense to dive into why the club exists in the first place. And it starts with how myself and ASD met.

I met fellow co-founder, ASD (affectionately known by his initials) when we worked together at a small media agency back in 2014. We were both in our mid-20s but had a very different outlook on life. I was out socialising in London 5 nights a week, whereas ASD was married, had a house, was more senior at work, and was for all intents and purposes, more adult.

One thing that stood out to me on top of this was his involvement in endurance sports. At a time where I was having KFC a few times a week, here was a man who was running and cycling multiple times a week.

It just so happens I had recently got my first road bike since I was a kid. A bright red Decathlon B'Twin Triban 3 which cost me £250 in the sale and would later serve me well for over 1,000 miles. I got it with the purpose of cycling the 9 miles from South West London to the office in a bid to save money and burn off the pints and fried chicken. And so it was I would frequently bump into ASD on my way into the office; I having done 9 miles, he having done 50 miles.

Terrible quality photo from the past - during London to Brighton on the Triban 3

He was training for a full Ironman and we got talking about it. "You should sign up"! Excitedly, I said yes having never run even a 5k, told all my friends and family about my new found ambition, and then, quickly realised that a 5k was almost outside of my capabilities, especially as I was smoking 20 a day at the time. But I had my eyes opened to the possibilities of long distance endurance sports.

ASD and I fell out of contact after I moved from the agency. We crossed paths every now and then, especially during my time at Sky, but it was a distant connection at best. I started cycling more seriously - the 18 miles commute each day did wonders for my fitness, so I started doing solo rides to coast like Brighton and Southend, plenty of Gran Fondos and the Ride London 100. And in 2015, I got into running culminating in the London Marathon in 2016 and the Equinox ultra-marathon in 2018, with plenty of half marathons along the way.

Start line of Ride London 100 mile in 2017

Fast forward to 2020; global pandemic and lockdown. My wife and I moved to Letchworth right in the midst of the first lockdown lifting to find more space and start raising a family starting with our Labradoodle puppy, Freddie.

By chance, ASD had tweeted about finding a message in a book in the local bookshop, David's. I DM'd him and it transpired I now lived about 100m away. We reconnected and started to see each other more often.

We may have bumped into each other naturally, but it was such a cool way to reconnect with someone.

The arrival of two children in 2022 and 2025 respectively put paid to a lot of my social and fitness ambitions, but in March 2025, ASD made the suggestion that we should start a cycling club, for reasons I'll detail in another post. The timing was perfect - I'd just run the Stevenage half marathon and was kind of done with running, and had been considering getting back on the bike for a while. So I was in.

The first family member, Freddie

We got talking. Planning. Building. And we set something up - and we're looking forward to see where this all goes.

ASD's handmade first club poster