A huge well done to Dean, John, Ryan & Simon for cycling the full 260km from the BDR office in Stratford-Upon-Avon to the Icom office in Maidstone to raise money for Cyclists Fighting Cancer – and still made it into work on Monday morning! 🚲
Read what Dean had to say about the experience below:
I was up and awake (sort of) at 03:40am and got to the office to meet up with Simon at 5am. Mark, Ryan and John arrived shortly afterwards and after a pre ride check, and some photos with us all smiling, we set off.
The first section to Chipping Norton was lovely, darkness turned to light, cold turned to warmth and we were all upbeat, chatting and enjoying life. Remembering it was a Sunday, Chipping Norton was closed at 07:30 when we passed through so we kicked on to Oxford in search of food. A couple of long uphill slogs combined with warm weather chipped away at us a bit, but we worked hard to keep together. Listing all the towns and villages we went through and the sights we saw would take forever, But what springs to mind, was Windsor in the sun was lovely, and then it went downhill from there!
After 150 km, John had a mechanical failure to his shifter so after a cable bodge, was left with just 2 gears. To cover 100 miles and then cover 50 miles with only two gears was outstanding. With the light failing and a couple of punctures eating up our riding time, I started to feel like we were going to fail in our task of getting to the finish line. A wrong turn later and another puncture for Simon meant we had to scrap our route and try and be as direct as possible. The problem with that was, I had purposefully designed the route to be as flat as possible whilst making good progress to ICOM’s office. As you can see below, the route we ended up taking, whilst being more direct was a lot hillier, not what we wanted after 200km and being in the saddle all day.
That last hill was Sevenoaks. My legs were screaming, my head was shouting to stop and quit but all I could do was stare at the little red light on the back of the bike about 100m ahead praying for it to level out so I knew when the hill would stop. Adrenalin and the thought of a KFC at the services on the way home meant that last few km’s we done at a decent pace and we all rolled into ICOM together.
In short, we had a Superhuman riding a broken bike.
Ryan had never cycled further than about 80km before and had never ridden in clipless pedals before (and surprisingly/sadly) didn’t fall off once!
Simon hadn’t cycled further than about 80km either, was on flat pedals and gravel tyres.
And I am overweight and old.
On paper, we shouldn’t have completed yesterday. In the end, I don’t think I would have wanted to complete it with anybody else.
Well done guys!
