Look at the shiny shiny!

Exciting times over the last 3 days. A bunch of new bits I ordered for the trip have started arriving. The new seatpost is here. Getting a comfortable position on the bike is crucial for serious road riding, let alone doing something as stupid as LeJog or JogLe. The post I went for is a KCNC Sc Pro. It's Scandium alloy so not only saves weight but does a decent job of damping out road buzz. The post also features a brilliant clamp design allowing independent fore/aft and tilt adjustment. All I have to do now is tweak the set up until I get the perfect position.

The pannier rack and rack bag also arrived. I went for the Topeak Super Touirst DX rack and Topeak MTX Trunk bag. The design of the Topeak racks and bags are really clever. The bag slides onto rails on the rack and clicks into place making the whole thing really secure. Rear racks are notoriously difficult to fit and this one did not break the mould. The M5 bolts supplied with the rack not fitting the M4 tapped holes in the frame didn't help the situation. After an hour of swearing, bending brackets and finding some new bolts in the shed I had the rack fitted. Really surprised how much weight the rack and empty bag add to the bike. Not looking forward to fitting panniers too and loading everything up with all the kit needed.....

The snow......

November 2010. The snow. The cold. The rain. The ice. The dark. The salt. All things that would deter even the hardest, most determined cyclists. Now, I like to think I'm a pretty hardy bloke but I'm also not stupid. There was no way I was about to ride £1000 of 3 month old shiny metal through snow, ice and grit. So the shiny bike was retired for the winter and I was back on the rusty hack bike for the commute.

Although I did cycle to work every day throughout the winter of 2010-2011, the training really suffered. Deciding to do something about it, I bought a turbo trainer in the run up to Christmas. I managed to get a bargain on  a Tacx Satori Stripes Ltd Ed trainer, picking it up for around £140. It proved very useful in helping to lose some of the excess weight gained by beer, turkey and boxes of Quality Street big enough to sink a battleship.

Although the turbo trainer proved useful, I did and still do, find staying in one place pretty tedious.

As the end of January approached, I hoped the weather would clear soon....

Training - the first months.......

Once back down south training began fairly soon. Using an old, bright yellow Ribble road bike ("donated" from my old man) I started putting in the odd 20 miler at the weekend and the occasional evening. This was fine to start with but it soon became clear this old steed wasn't up to the job.

One tax refund later (thanks HMRC) I was the proud owner of a 2010 Specialized Sectuer Elite. Training stepped up a gear with the new bike and 20 milers were being regularly churned out.

The aim of a 60 mile ride by Halloween didn't materialise (too many boozy weekends in London and Glasgow) but I did make a promise to myself to continue riding throughout the winter, no matter how bad it got......

The beginning...

June 2010. The middle of festival campsite by Loch Ness. Sitting smugly under a promotional gazebo. This was when and where the idea of cycling from one end of the country to the other was first pitched to me by an old friend. The reason? To do something a bit crazy, to push ourselves slightly further than the daily 2 mile, 2 wheeled commute and for us to have something to look back on after our knees and backs finally give up on us.

It was all Callum's idea but to be fair, I didn't take much persuading. With a rough date of Summer 2011 set for the trip, we left the comfort of the gazebo, stepped over the passed out neds, enjoyed a cracking weekend of music and beer and headed home to begin the preparations.