London to Brighton 09

Who’s riding the London to Brighton bike ride this year ?
Done it a few times and its a blast !!
Get them slicks on and join in, see you on the beach for beer and chips !

Willy wave.

I did it in 3 hours 6 mins on a Stumpjumper FSR with offroad tyres…

(only just offroads though, conti Twisters)

Ps.. probably wont go this year as its hard enough getting out on my bike these days so will save my day pass for offroad.

Have fun.

Do you want a medal Tinsy? 😆

🙂 yes please… Will it have my name engraved on it?

I did it once with a bunch of people from work.

Most terrifying thing I’ve done on a bike ever. 27 000 people, 26 500 of them seemed broadly unable to ride a bike.

sorry tinsy, 2h 41 on an M2 s-works with slicks…

When we did the off-road version, it took a little over 9 hours, lots of swearing and more jaffacakes than I thought I could ever eat. 😀

maybe i’ll have a go, how quick does it sell out?
is it possible to ride the route anyway, or is it along otherwise busy unpleasant roads that get closed for the day or something?

What was your average speed PK, that seems very good going. I will take the Medal from Tinsy and give it to you instead!

Dont I feel the fat old fool… 😳

Horatio remember its a charity ride, its on closed roads that would be as you say otherwise busy/deadly, with drink stations on route, and lots and lots of volunteers.

Bunners, if you enjoyed L to B, check out the Trailbreak (.co.uk) South Downs way Lemming trail, its an organized ride over 2 days doing the SDW, much more on the MTB theme and non of the agro getting you and the bike back home.

Can you do it on a road bike?
How do you enter?
When is it?

I would like to have a go.

L2B is an awful thing (yes I know it raises money), but as someone has posted about 98% of the people there don’t ride any other day of the year, you will see people lying in pools of blood in the road and you won’t be able to ridce up any of the hills.
If anyone’s interested I might do another L2B2L in late February/early March (without the tedious faffing around lost in Crawley like last time though).
Meet somewhere like Epsom, out over Headley Heath, parallel to the A23 before crossing over to the east and over Ditchling. Coffee and pizza at Barrollos then back over Deveil’s Dyke, up through Faygate etc and back over the hill to Epsom.
Nothing fancy, steady pace, job done.
Anyone interested?

L2B used to cause us all sorts of problems when I worked in a London bike shop. As mentioned, 98% of it is done by people who ride maybe once or twice a year and everyone digs the bike out of the shed a day before then brings their pride and joy (read: rustbucket) into the shop expecting a full service immediately and for free (cos it’s for charidee). OK, not everyone expected it for free but there were an amazing number of people who’d ask. People seemed genuinely shocked when told that the workshop was fully booked for 10 days in advance, we had a few people get really quite angry.

The event itself has all sorts of bikes, everything from top end carbon bling road and TT bikes to BMXs, penny farthings, unicycles, recumbents, tandems – you get the idea. And most of them have very little idea of how to ride.

L2B2L is a nice day out, a manageable 110-130ish miles (depending on route) with breakfast in London, lunch on the beach then afternoon tea on the way home somewhere. 🙂

Trailbreak Lemmings looks cool
http://www.trailbreak.co.uk/lemming/index.php?go=diary
Quite fancy a punt at that :o)