Thursday 28 January 2010

Time waits for no man

Time moved on from those initial forays into long arduous challenges and the support through lack of time, motivation and other commitments drifted away. None of the friendships suffered as a consequence. In truth the support that I had been given was as much a measure of those friendships in the first place, and given that the idea had been mine at the outset, it is no surprise that I'm the one still musing over the possibilities that we had then explored.

In the interim my son George arrived and we busied ourselves with the hustle and bustle that is small children and everything that goes with them. I'm glad to say that he shows signs of having inherited his fathers boundless energy. It'll not be long son before we shall be up those hills together.

The challenge of completing something extended remained and in early 2009 I started again to look at the LEJOG cycle. This time I knew that I would be on my own and I think that part of me welcomed that.

In the spring I started to review the different ways to complete the 870 mile trip. Supported and fast, in a group and moderately quick, on my own unsupported, on a roadbike, on a trike or on a hybrid/converted mountain bike. These were just the bike options, for there have of course been umpteen LEJOGs completed by any number of other means of propulsion.

Fascinated by the trike option I followed the sale of a number of these on ebay and discovered that they attracted a certain breed of enthusiast, selling for no small amount of money, even secondhand. Eventually though I was lucky enough to secure the purchase of an Anthrotech, a German three wheeler. These machines are strong and upright by comparison to some of the more low slung alternatives and I thoroughly enjoyed getting to grips with the cornering at speed and the change in view.

Contrary to many people's view of these machines, with the aid of a flag and obvious lighting they are easily visible. Indeed this machine had the added advantage of being so much wider than an ordinary bicycle, that motorists thought twice about squeezing past on a narrow road or in traffic. There simply wasn't room. Their biggest drawback actually came from oncoming traffic, that on narrow country roads had nowhere to go to avoid you if you came upon someone on a sudden bend.

I persevered with the training on this bike however and completed the Norwich 100 on it, in June 2009. As a preview to long ditance cycling it was all I needed to know. Battling into a headwind along the north coast of Norfolk in sheets of rain, it took me 11 hours to complete the 100 miles and considerably less time to decide that this was not the bike for me!

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