Training is not going well. A mixture of crappy weather and commitments, (I'm a single parent), have made it hard for me to really get some saddle time in. I did do some miles at the weekend, but really didn't enjoy it. Three bursts of hail stones, wind, rain and the realization that I don't like drop bars, There just isn't the variety of hand positions that you get with butterfly bars, so I took my butterfly bars off my old bike, (Keira) and put them on to my new bike, (Sienna). This does save having to buy a new bar bag, so that's good.
I put Keira's original bars back on and she is now back to her original, beautiful self, She's a GT Zum S1, a hybrid, but I urned her into a tourer, shoved over 20kg of crap on her and rode to Italy... she's due a rest. She will now be a commuter bike, her original purpose.
So, this weekend, the first May Bank Holiday, I will be on Sienna, getting some serious miles in. I don't doubt I'll be tweaking the seat a bit and maybe the new bars, but she is set up, pretty much how she'll be for the 1000 mile Tour de Stannah... let's see how that goes
Tuesday, 30 April 2013
Thursday, 21 March 2013
A new blog can only mean one thing, a new bike ride... the Tour de Stannah
This one is staying in the UK though, starting in Glasgow and finishing in Hampshire. 400 miles in a straight line, but I'll be doing a 1000 mile zig-zag down the country. I work for Stannah and plan to visit each of Stannah's Service Branches starting, (as I already mentioned), in Glasgow, then heading south to Gateshead, Warrington, Mansfield, Birmingham, Norwich, Dartford, Crayford, Brackley, Bristol, Christchurch and finishing at the Stannah Main Office in Andover, (Hampshire).
I'll be doing it for charity again, (http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/TourDeStannah), this time solely for Naomi House & Jack's Place. Last time I split the sponsorship between them and Help for Heroes, but I think H4H will do alright without my pennies. Naomi House, a children's hospice, relies on 90% of it's funding coming from donations. That's £6,300,000 a year to raise, just to keep going. I visited them after my last ride and the work they do is amazing and the joy they bring to the kids and their families is invaluable, so if I can help them in anyway, I will. I'll get each service branch to carry out its own fundraising, either for a charity local to them, or for Naomi House, (which would be great), and to help with that I hope to be joined each day by someone from the service branch, either for the whole day, or part of it.
I'll be carrying everything on the bike again, but this time I'll be staying with someone from at Service Branch, or on the inbetween days in a B&B, so no camping. This means no tent, no sleeping bag and no roll mat, which makes the bike lighter. Correction, the NEW bike lighter. My lovely Keira is in semi retirement (the shed), so I will be doing this ride on my new steed, a Boardman CX... Sienna. She's a cyclocross bike, basically a toughened, chunky version of a road bike, that can handle going off road. I've made a couple of changes to her, I put my Selle SMP saddle on her and changed the tyres from the knobbly ones she came with, for Continental Travel Contact tyres. I have them on Keira and haven't had a puncture since 2010, they're the bollocks.
So this is it, the start of the journey, not literally, that's not till August, but you know what I mean...
This one is staying in the UK though, starting in Glasgow and finishing in Hampshire. 400 miles in a straight line, but I'll be doing a 1000 mile zig-zag down the country. I work for Stannah and plan to visit each of Stannah's Service Branches starting, (as I already mentioned), in Glasgow, then heading south to Gateshead, Warrington, Mansfield, Birmingham, Norwich, Dartford, Crayford, Brackley, Bristol, Christchurch and finishing at the Stannah Main Office in Andover, (Hampshire).
I'll be doing it for charity again, (http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/TourDeStannah), this time solely for Naomi House & Jack's Place. Last time I split the sponsorship between them and Help for Heroes, but I think H4H will do alright without my pennies. Naomi House, a children's hospice, relies on 90% of it's funding coming from donations. That's £6,300,000 a year to raise, just to keep going. I visited them after my last ride and the work they do is amazing and the joy they bring to the kids and their families is invaluable, so if I can help them in anyway, I will. I'll get each service branch to carry out its own fundraising, either for a charity local to them, or for Naomi House, (which would be great), and to help with that I hope to be joined each day by someone from the service branch, either for the whole day, or part of it.
I'll be carrying everything on the bike again, but this time I'll be staying with someone from at Service Branch, or on the inbetween days in a B&B, so no camping. This means no tent, no sleeping bag and no roll mat, which makes the bike lighter. Correction, the NEW bike lighter. My lovely Keira is in semi retirement (the shed), so I will be doing this ride on my new steed, a Boardman CX... Sienna. She's a cyclocross bike, basically a toughened, chunky version of a road bike, that can handle going off road. I've made a couple of changes to her, I put my Selle SMP saddle on her and changed the tyres from the knobbly ones she came with, for Continental Travel Contact tyres. I have them on Keira and haven't had a puncture since 2010, they're the bollocks.
So this is it, the start of the journey, not literally, that's not till August, but you know what I mean...
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