Since I last wrote we have been busy. BBC Radio Suffolk kindly gave us a slot on Georgina Rowe's (sitting in for James Hazell,) programme last Thursday, the 18th Feb. This can be heard again at 'Listen again' online and the feedback has been really positive. Since it ran just before we embarked on our first very public training session, we had a good number of people come to see us in Ipswich on Saturday, to say how much they appreciated the programme. Thank you Georgina for helping us.
Just one person benefiting from Samaritans work as a consequence of this will have made the experience worth it.
So we turned up in Ipswich town centre at 10:00ish on Saturday morning and found ourselves confronted with Saturday market day. Our booked space in front of the Town Hall was somewhat overshadowed by the labryinth of stalls, but we made the very best of the huge numbers of people out enjoying the rare sunshine, squeezed as it was between two days of wintery sleet and cold winds.
Give or take the odd trip to 'ease springs', and with the aid of 6 willing volunteers from the local Samaritans office, I managed 6 hours in the saddle on the turbo trainer. I couldn't tell you exactly how far that equates to, since my trip computer is attached to the front wheel. As a couple of observent youngsters pointed out...'you're not getting very far!' but I'm guessing that somewhere between 60 and 70 miles wouldn't be far off.
Over the course of the day the genereous folks of Ipswich donated £241.12 for which we are extremely grateful and more importantly we got to talk to a good many people who were interested both in the work that Samaritans do and the LEJOG challenge itself.
Work on the route has continued apace. Access to google earth has proven invaluable since some of the roads marked on other oute finding maps simply don't exist. On a mountainbike maybe, but not mine with all the clobber she'll be laiden down with. So far I've planned in detail the route as far as Carnforth in Lancashire and a planned stop at the RSPB reserve at Leighton Moss near Silverdale. If you've never been there, it is a fantastic place to watch Otters in the early evening and in the Autumn there is an incredible Starling roost that turns the sky grey and black in a swirling mass of feathers.
Next week I shall be completeing my first back to back cycle days and hope to cover approximatley 300 miles in four days. I'll let you know how I get on.
Tuesday, 23 February 2010
Wednesday, 17 February 2010
Training and Fund-Raising
Since the end of 2009 I have concentrated on getting my fund-raising campaign off the ground and getting on my bike as much as possible. The weather hasn't helped with the latter, but an inexpensive turbo trainer has solved that particular problem. (Though I haven't run this one for long, and so have no idea how long it is going to last, I'd be interested to know what you get for a more expensive version.) When it comes to turning your legs over, this could not be simpler. Changing gear on the bike, increases the workload and thereby the effort. Certainly at this stage in my training it has proven to be ideal and at less than £50, a bargain.
As for the fund-raising, things are going equally well. As you will have seen from my fund-raising webpage, www.virginmoneygiving.com/johnbakewell I chose Samaritans for personal reasons. William and his family will be in my thoughts throughout my time in the saddle.
I have discovered that there is a lot more to fund-raising than collecting a few sponsors and things have changed considerably since I last tried to raise money doing the London Marathon in 1997. There's a lot more red tape for a start. There are also a lot more people after your money these days and I can't at all blame the public for getting a little charity weary. It is incredible how generous people have been and are, when you consider all the organisations that exist purely on the back of charitable donations. Don't let anyone tell you that the British public doesn't care.
In the end with the help of local branch volunteers I split my fund-raising into two main streams. The first is through the website and the second by getting out on the street, on my bike on the turbo trainer, with a tin. This way Samaritans volunteers get to talk to the public about what they do and I get to raise some cash for them whilst we're at it. Oh, and I get some training in at the same time.
To date the website sits at just under £400 if you include the gift aid and the first public training/fund-raising session is this Saturday, the 20th Feb, on the Town Hall steps in Ipswich. At this point I would like to thank Wendy and Nicky at Ipswich Borough Council for helping with issueing licences etc and for making this event happen so easily. Fingers crossed for the weather.
As for the fund-raising, things are going equally well. As you will have seen from my fund-raising webpage, www.virginmoneygiving.com/johnbakewell I chose Samaritans for personal reasons. William and his family will be in my thoughts throughout my time in the saddle.
I have discovered that there is a lot more to fund-raising than collecting a few sponsors and things have changed considerably since I last tried to raise money doing the London Marathon in 1997. There's a lot more red tape for a start. There are also a lot more people after your money these days and I can't at all blame the public for getting a little charity weary. It is incredible how generous people have been and are, when you consider all the organisations that exist purely on the back of charitable donations. Don't let anyone tell you that the British public doesn't care.
In the end with the help of local branch volunteers I split my fund-raising into two main streams. The first is through the website and the second by getting out on the street, on my bike on the turbo trainer, with a tin. This way Samaritans volunteers get to talk to the public about what they do and I get to raise some cash for them whilst we're at it. Oh, and I get some training in at the same time.
To date the website sits at just under £400 if you include the gift aid and the first public training/fund-raising session is this Saturday, the 20th Feb, on the Town Hall steps in Ipswich. At this point I would like to thank Wendy and Nicky at Ipswich Borough Council for helping with issueing licences etc and for making this event happen so easily. Fingers crossed for the weather.
Wednesday, 10 February 2010
Rehashed Giant will do.
With the Anthrotech duly sold on, I started to consider the alternatives and found myself increasingly drawn to the idea of converting my trusty old mountian bike into a tourer. A hard tail Giant that I had inherited from my younger brother some years earlier, it needed a rigid front end and a new set of running gear.
Finding forks that would fit 26 inch wheels and fit my existing brakes and take a set of low rider pannier bags proved interesting, but John St Cycles in London supplied me with a pair of Thorn steel forks that have proven ideal at £99 for a set.
The running gear was replaced taking into account the need for a decent set of low ratio gears for the hills in Cornwall and beyond, and a complete set of Ortleib panniers finished off the conversion. From here on in it would be all about the training and planning of the route itself.
Finding forks that would fit 26 inch wheels and fit my existing brakes and take a set of low rider pannier bags proved interesting, but John St Cycles in London supplied me with a pair of Thorn steel forks that have proven ideal at £99 for a set.
The running gear was replaced taking into account the need for a decent set of low ratio gears for the hills in Cornwall and beyond, and a complete set of Ortleib panniers finished off the conversion. From here on in it would be all about the training and planning of the route itself.
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!
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!
Thursday, 7 January 2010
Rowbikes and Streetrowers
Mmm, not much of a blogger if it's going to be 3 weeks between entries, hey! Well I'd often wondered where one found the time to write like this. So where were we. Looking at some kind of Lands End to John O'Groats (LEJOG) challenge to start off our rowing challenge.
The obvious solution it seemed to me, was to try and find out whether or not it would be possible to row LEJOG.! I could see that plenty of other strange ways had been found to complete the journey and in any case, if you want profile these days, you really have to do something extraordinary. LEJOG itself is probably considered a mere rite of passage these days by keen cyclists, but to row the 870 miles...now that really would be something.
Actually it didn't even start as a row, but as an idea to cycle some kind of a machine that would carry two people. The idea being that we could cycle 2 hours on 2 hours off, just as you would in a 2 man trans-Atlantic row. One would cycle, the other would sleep, or eat or wave at the traffic, whatever. (As I retrace my thought processes, this still seems like and interesting idea!)
I looked at all sorts of bikes. There are some incredible designs out there. The eight freight designed by Mike Burrows, was one that I contemplated. An example of this machine sits outside Borwell Cycles in Norwich and I enquired after its availability for such a challenge. In truth it was never big enough and the brakes would not have coped with the ardour of trying to stop two 14 stone blokes down all those Cornish hills. (No shame on the bike you understand, just the physics of the thing.) I shall have to come back and edit this page because I don't have some of the others to hand. I can see the opportunity for a book on freight bikes.
Anyway, as time moved on and we discussed these plans further, we came up with the idea of trying to find a machine that could actually be rowed, and thereby mirroring our Atlantic ambitions. Here again we found a number of contenders. Take a look at http://www.rowbike.com/ for one example and http://www.streetrower.com/ for another. The latter of these we took a close interest in, meeting up with it's designer and builder Simon Tarrant.
Having secured permission to buy one of these machines through the ride to work scheme, I travelled with Paul, Tom and Jack to meet up with Simon at Dorney Lake, the 2012 Olympic site. Simon was everything that one would expect of an inventor; bright, enormously enthusiastic for both his creation and the possibilities it presented and was as a consequence keen to help us in any way that he could.
The Streetrower that we saw that day was the first completed prototype. The machine that we completed our final test drive on, was the sleek finished article that you see on his website. The design of the powertrain is extremely clever, very efficient and capable in suitably trained rowing hands, of impressive speeds. In part this was the part that scared us off though. The steering was electrical and I couldn't get my head around the possibility of a steering failure doing 30 mph on the A30!
The obvious solution it seemed to me, was to try and find out whether or not it would be possible to row LEJOG.! I could see that plenty of other strange ways had been found to complete the journey and in any case, if you want profile these days, you really have to do something extraordinary. LEJOG itself is probably considered a mere rite of passage these days by keen cyclists, but to row the 870 miles...now that really would be something.
Actually it didn't even start as a row, but as an idea to cycle some kind of a machine that would carry two people. The idea being that we could cycle 2 hours on 2 hours off, just as you would in a 2 man trans-Atlantic row. One would cycle, the other would sleep, or eat or wave at the traffic, whatever. (As I retrace my thought processes, this still seems like and interesting idea!)
I looked at all sorts of bikes. There are some incredible designs out there. The eight freight designed by Mike Burrows, was one that I contemplated. An example of this machine sits outside Borwell Cycles in Norwich and I enquired after its availability for such a challenge. In truth it was never big enough and the brakes would not have coped with the ardour of trying to stop two 14 stone blokes down all those Cornish hills. (No shame on the bike you understand, just the physics of the thing.) I shall have to come back and edit this page because I don't have some of the others to hand. I can see the opportunity for a book on freight bikes.
Anyway, as time moved on and we discussed these plans further, we came up with the idea of trying to find a machine that could actually be rowed, and thereby mirroring our Atlantic ambitions. Here again we found a number of contenders. Take a look at http://www.rowbike.com/ for one example and http://www.streetrower.com/ for another. The latter of these we took a close interest in, meeting up with it's designer and builder Simon Tarrant.
Having secured permission to buy one of these machines through the ride to work scheme, I travelled with Paul, Tom and Jack to meet up with Simon at Dorney Lake, the 2012 Olympic site. Simon was everything that one would expect of an inventor; bright, enormously enthusiastic for both his creation and the possibilities it presented and was as a consequence keen to help us in any way that he could.
The Streetrower that we saw that day was the first completed prototype. The machine that we completed our final test drive on, was the sleek finished article that you see on his website. The design of the powertrain is extremely clever, very efficient and capable in suitably trained rowing hands, of impressive speeds. In part this was the part that scared us off though. The steering was electrical and I couldn't get my head around the possibility of a steering failure doing 30 mph on the A30!
Thursday, 17 December 2009
Lands End to John O'Groats for the Samaritans
In late April 2010 I plan to set off on my own 1100 mile journey from End to End. These things are impossible to put down you know... cave time, my wife calls it. Journeys or expeditions like this have a habit of morphing from one week, month or year to the next. I couldn't tell you exactly when this one gained substance, except that I needed to find something to fill the space left by my aborted idea to row the Atlantic. (Temporarily aborted, maybe.)
Well that's what happens in a fertile imagination. On top of such and such a mountain one day, amid the ocean waves another. Searching for the next available weekend to catch some serious freshair and blow a hole through the addled corridors of my brain. We're all into something. For me it's exercise. Exercise that goes on a bit...and a bit more. Oh, I forgot to mention the 3 peaks at the beginning. Lands End to John O'Groats with Snowdon, Sca Fell and Ben Nevis thrown in for good measure. It was never about the ends after all, but the journey. It was always about the journey.
The trans-Atlantic row was the same. The involvement with the Woodvale Challenge organisation provided the skeleton, but in the end it would have been about the journey. I am cometitive you understand, but challenges like these; challenges that last days or weeks are more about what goes on inside your head than whether you win or lose. How can you lose if you manage to row 3,000 miles across an ocean?
So how do you get from a cycle to a row or a row to a cycle? Well, simple really. At the early stages of our planning back in 2007 I started to look at a way of raising our profile and raising funds to cover the cost of the rowing boat and everything else that went with it. At a conservative estimate, if you join the Woodvale race, it's going to cost you £60,000 +, so we needed plenty of exposure. We figured that if we completed a few smaller challenges in the run up to the big one, then we would benefit in many ways at the same time. We would gel as a team, gain fitness, test our resolve and raise our profile. Lands End to John O'Groats was to be one of these challenges.
Well that's what happens in a fertile imagination. On top of such and such a mountain one day, amid the ocean waves another. Searching for the next available weekend to catch some serious freshair and blow a hole through the addled corridors of my brain. We're all into something. For me it's exercise. Exercise that goes on a bit...and a bit more. Oh, I forgot to mention the 3 peaks at the beginning. Lands End to John O'Groats with Snowdon, Sca Fell and Ben Nevis thrown in for good measure. It was never about the ends after all, but the journey. It was always about the journey.
The trans-Atlantic row was the same. The involvement with the Woodvale Challenge organisation provided the skeleton, but in the end it would have been about the journey. I am cometitive you understand, but challenges like these; challenges that last days or weeks are more about what goes on inside your head than whether you win or lose. How can you lose if you manage to row 3,000 miles across an ocean?
So how do you get from a cycle to a row or a row to a cycle? Well, simple really. At the early stages of our planning back in 2007 I started to look at a way of raising our profile and raising funds to cover the cost of the rowing boat and everything else that went with it. At a conservative estimate, if you join the Woodvale race, it's going to cost you £60,000 +, so we needed plenty of exposure. We figured that if we completed a few smaller challenges in the run up to the big one, then we would benefit in many ways at the same time. We would gel as a team, gain fitness, test our resolve and raise our profile. Lands End to John O'Groats was to be one of these challenges.
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