On a sunlight morning, Team Södermalm pulled out from Älvsjö Station at 06:00 for their ride to Trosa. The destination, Trosa, is a charming harbour town with quaint houses and a canal running through the middle of the town to give it a feel of little Amsterdam. However, the route there is itself a beautiful stretch of road reminiscent of stages from the Tour de France – the flat sections at least – due to the expansive fields and forests, which on occasions roll out to meet the sea. There is also, halfway through, a ferry where the riders took a well earned rest since the pace was kept up at a respectful 26 km/h.

While the kilometers ticked off Andre gently provided us with the necessary encouragement and tips to complete the route and improve our skills on the road. Yet, the road is its own teacher as Jordo picked up the obligatory puncture and had to demonstrate his tyre changing skills under pressure. He clocked under 10 minutes, even with the insanely high ridges on his tyres. So I’m afraid the nefarious record of the longest tyre change is still held by Perillo. Although I’m sure he would want me to point to the fact that Jordo only had to contend with the front wheel unlike him. Thankfully, all of the riders patiently waited since they had been fed at a little cafe in Trosa and were on route to a waffle house for the snack on the way home. Life doesn’t get better than a bike ride with friends, fresh air and fika! …Unless you’re Andree, who quite enjoys the post ride shower with his bike.

This beautiful island provides stunning scenery and quiet roads that allowed the boys to hone their skills with slip streaming and just generally build up stamina. Those skills and stamina will be required as the relatively novice group aims to achieve the true ton: 100 miles or for you Swedes, 161 km. However, this training ride was more modest, yet one we are still proud of since we completed over a 100km.

Beyond that, the group raised their average speed up to a respectable 25km per hour, but we still in general struggled to keep up with Kristoffer when he chose to put the power down. Thankfully we all knew that the Ekerö golf course would provide a nice cup of coffee to reward our efforts. Having said that, by the end of the day, I still stepped off my bike like John Wayne.