At 6am on Sunday the 28th July this year, John and I will set off from Buckingham Palace in London and head North with 1000 other cyclists. Eventually we hope to reach Edinburgh. We’ll then turn around and head back, aiming to reach Loughton on the outskirts of London before 7am on Friday 3rd August. That’s 1450km in just over 120 hours.
Not content to tackle this on normal bikes, we’ll be using a Circe Cycles Morpheus – a kind of half-recumbent/half-normal tandem. Or at least, we were going to be until about a month before the start when we realise that, no matter how much we liked the Morpheus, it wasn’t quite going to work. As a result, Rob will be rolling on a brand spanking new MetaBike (preview here), and John on his usual upright.
We’ll write about our preparations below and you can also follow up on twitter( @Darkerside), as well as throught the official event tracking system (Rob is rider L22).
Current mental status is: concerned by this unseasonable heatwave.
If you’d rather drop us a note directly, contact details are under the About menu at the top.
Cheers!
Rob & John
2 Comments
Add Yours →Hi Rob, my congratulations to your finish at LEL. As I am just a beginner in the recumbent world (finished my first season with a self-buid-up metabike) I am very interested in your thoughts about “what went well and what didn´t”. Unfotunately I couldn´t find this. Can you help me please.
I started with recumbentcycling because of some back problems and tested different concepts and ended with the metabike, because i could use so much stuff of my road bike and the price was fair for the frame set (without fork). I started very upright and lowered the seat a little, but I am still very upright. TEst of lower seat angles will follow next year. As I am lifing near the mountains I do a lot of climbing and still feel after 4000 km, that on grades over 10% I am faster with the Roadbike. In all other conditions (except “racing in the streets of a town”- up an down cyclepaths…) I feel fatser wwith the metabike. So I finished a “Marathon” with 211 km and 3000 m uphill. The legs are tired afterwards, but everything else does not hurt/is not so tired as on my roadbike. So for me it is a win. NExt Idea is to start witg the audax-Racing/touring and I am really enjoyed your writing.
With kind regards, Michael
Hi Michael, and apologies for taking ten days to get back to you!
It appears that having written the ‘what went well and what didn’t’ post, I didn’t actually publish it. I’ll sort that ASAP… In terms of climbing, have a read of this: http://www.fietsersafstappen.nl/english/focus-breathe-how-to-climb-fast-with-a-recumbent/
Personally I find that I can’t steer the MetaBike with my head laid all the way back, but you might get on better.
Cheers!
Rob