Challenge 2 begins…

Four 4 a Cure – part 2. Cycling from one Coast to the other, Whitehaven to Newcastle.

The next part of my fundraising challenge begins tomorrow morning. I will be setting off from Tickhill at about 6am and cycling to Doncaster train station to catch the 0659 train to Durham.

From there, I will be meeting up with some of my intrepid co-cyclists where a mini-bus will transfer us across the country to Whitehaven in Cumbria for about 12.30pm.

We start cycling at 1pm, heading to our first stopover at Keswick, a ride of approximately 31 miles that includes a 1200ft climb through the Whinlatter Forest. Gulp!!!

I finished off the eBay Bike last night and rode it for the first time – a quick loop out from Tickhill to Braithwell and back…

This is what she looks like. For those eagle eyed readers who have been looking at the previous iterations, the wheels are different (700c as opposed to 26″) as are the bars and stem. Of more concern whilst riding it for the first time last night was the front brake and the handling. The front disc rotor rubs constantly against the pads, but if I loosen it, I have less braking!!! As for the handling, the headset is too tight, making turning harder, which leads to a very twitchy feel. If I loosen the headset, it moves too much, especially over the bumps.

I’m putting these down to teething troubles! A few tweaks tonight and hopefully it’ll be ok!

I will be blogging as much as I can over the weekend using my phone, hopefully with enough mobile phone signal to upload a few beautiful views. Please keep checking back for updates and feel free to comment. Just as importantly, don’t forget that these ridiculuos antics are designed to promote my fundraising for Diabetes UK, so if you can forward the link to this blog and specifically the donations page to as many people as you can, I’d be grateful!

http://www.curesam.com/

http://www.diabeteschallenge.org.uk/challenge/four4acure