DIFC London To Brighton Sept 11th Updates

[chownie]

I know that some of us are doing the London To Brighton ride on our BMXs in September for various charities and thought a thread on our updates would be a good idea?  It would be good to see how we are all doing leading up to the ride. 54 miles on our BMXs is worth a thread I reckon!  Also good to know the charities that we are riding for. 

I had my first proper ride out yesterday with my girlfriend and started with a 20 miler,  on/off road.  To be honest it wasn't bad at all and easily manageable.  54 miles will be quite different of course especially with the hills!  But I can't wait to be honest. 

Im raising money for the MS Society UK as my girlfriend was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis 3 years ago and we really want to raise awareness and as much money as we can. 

Im going new school on the ride as my World Tour Performer is just a bit rickety at the moment and I don't think it would go much further than a few miles! I haven't the money to get it sorted at the moment.  But my BSD Passenger is soooo smooth and lovely to ride! 

Bring on September!

Peter

[dinglem]

Hi Pete,

Great post - only just seen this as I've off the grid for the last month or so and am only now going through the posts I have missed.

We are doing the ride for Cardiac Risk in the Young/AEDdonate in order to raise funds for public accessible defibrillators to be placed out in the community. As many of you will be aware we unfortunately lost my brother-in-law around 18months ago so this is a significant fund-raising event for myself and the wife. She is joining us for the ride, along with my sister. Quite a number of the AEDdonate charity team have also signed up with us and will be riding the course with us whilst carrying full oxygen kits and defibs!

We've got up to about half distance pretty easily so far - riding along the canals from the centre of Brum (took the train in) back home again. I have been using my mountain bike but I took my trusty Burner out a few days ago and put some serious road miles on it to see how it felt.

To be honest I was shocked at the low gearing but the bike I am building for the ride will be much higher geared to get me down the road a little more efficiently, plus I've fitted the longest cranks I could get my hands on as well (Hanabishi 180). I was also shocked at how much I ached all over the following morning so I am going to fit a taller seat post to my L2B build.

I am using my newly unearthed Birmingham WHEELS Pro on the day, and the build is pretty much there now. Just the brakes to bolt on and it's done. I am going to change the seat post from a Shimano Dx to a taller UNI graphite based on my experience on my last ride out. I have gone for Tech 2 levers to keep them out of my way for the majority of the ride also. Rims are skinnies with unusual Carlisle Aggressor R/A tyres which have a semi-slick feel to hopefully lessen rolling resistance... Saddle is a modern black and red padded mountain bike effort.

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I've also picked up a vintage race lid too 

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[griff]

I would be wary of using tech 2s Martin, some of those downhill bits will be sketchy as Fook if you've got shit brakes (unless of course you can actually use them  )

[dinglem]

There will be plenty of testing to get everything spot-on before the actual ride..... scope for some tweaks anyway. I can reach those levers so they will work. The bike is so crazy-light - I am hoping that fact will help also.