London Fixed-gear and Single-speed SJS Cycles

Nobody notice a girl directing people in from the bottom of the hill, into the feeding station, then helping feed/water the masses? It was she that cycled ahead and put out all the candles, then held back after the feeding station, to make sure that stragglers were pointed in the right direction. That's 2 London-to-Dunwich rides for her in back-to-back weekends.

She was wearing a head-light, and was dancing round in the road, trying to stop fast flying folk from missing nosh and bevs.

Totally amazing ride, but so completely and utterly different from last year. Hardest part once again though was the last 10 miles before the feed stop.
Developed various aches and pains everywhere over the 11 hours, but was very happy that the legs/lungs didn't blow up, especially seeing as my previous longest ride this year was Cambridge a couple of months ago.
Was glad to have a nice forum contingent out there providing good company and banter all the way. Well done all - photos to follow.

What a brilliant, brilliant couple of days out. Good riding by the Hipeleton. Fuck Yeh!

Huge thanks to Sam and Brett who stayed behind en extra 10 minutes at the feed station and attempted to relay me back to the main group.

Good fun riding with Jacqui and Moose (sorry Jacqui about my crap mileage estimates) but the thing that will stay with me most after that ride is hearing Jacqui's "War Cry" as we turned a corner a come across yet another long ascent on shattered legs. If I was that hill I would have flattened the fuck out after hearing that. Or surrendered. Or both.

Brilliant hanging out with Stompy, hillbilly, MA3K, Corny, The Brick, Aussie forumengers, et al. afterwards. Many, many, many rocks were thrown.

One large recovery burrito, a couple of beers, 11 hours sleep and a slow spin to the office this morning and I feel fine. Recovery burritos are the key. As messed up as this sounds, I'm looking forward to next year.

Might have seen her helping at the feed stop (skinny, big hair?), definitely saw the candles though, and they were brilliant when we weren't too sure about the route.

Huge thanks to her and the other people working the feed station... I think most of us were a bit too zonked to appreciate it at the time.

Congratulations to all of you! Bumped into a couple of people who'd just woken up, post Dunwich, in the pub last night. I managed two days of the Country Fair and I feel broken.

Absolutely gutted to have missed this. This has to be the only time I've sat outside a lovely Cotswold Pub enjoying fine local beer and wishing that I was sober in Epping.

Next year, there and back, on fixed.

Well done all you guys that actually finished. The fear of a massive calf-cramp in the middle of nowhere ended up keeping me from getting back on after the feeding station.

HUGE thanks to Corny for rolling with me in my hour of need while my calves felt like they were about to explode.

I'm looking forward to training on some long rides and doing it 'proper' next year. Annoying thing was that I still felt pretty good at half way, climbing was getting hard but I wasn't really all that tired I just had fucked calves. More fluid and salt next time!

Well done everyone!

Great effort lads and ladies, it looked a great ride. I am there next year without fail!

It's depressing having missed it, but to console myself i pushed myself in other areas at a festival.. physically weaker but spiritually stronger ;)

True dat.

Maximum Respekt.

Safe blaaaad.

After recovery Belgian beers and movies last night.. I managed to fall asleep on Central Line this morning and wake up at Mile End.. then got on District back the other direction instead of Central! Duh. Anyway 11am I've finally made it to work. The legs are tired for sure and I've got my left achillies overuse pain back but this will all subside.

The only problem? Now I have to do a 200 mile ride.. ;)

Aroo: "hearing Jacqui's "War Cry" as we turned a corner a come across yet another long ascent on shattered legs"

haha.. sounds like Sam and I riding back to Ipswich.. "thought you said these were pancake flat?!", "another fucking hill", "this is the highest fucking place in suffolk for fuck's sake!!"

mmm, burrito...

Heh heh heh

That was the single longest ride I've ever done, and it was a real experience doing it fixed... one of us on riding 46x18 the other 46x18 in just over 7 hours.

If anyone's interested in some truly geeky stats, this will be up for a short period:
http://utrack.crempa.net/report/save...f6418b&lang=en

Hope no one got offended by the site of 2 riders rubbing volterol into some special places at the side of the road in Needham Market :)

Well done to everyone...

Mmm.. special places..

I thought the mis estimates were good they kept me going... sorry if my frustration scream at the hill traumatised you and moose.. I just had too... noticed you two stayed well back of me for a while after that! lol ;)
all in good fun though..

I took my GPS on the ride but I don't think it was receiving well in my bag. Will check it later.. one day.. maybe.

@ monkeywhippet nice stats. was already surprised by the 1300m elevation my gps was reporting but 2400m sounds a bit steep

That was my gps putting out those stats and i think they may be corrupted, it's elevation stats are always very much on the high side.

Although I put the info into mapmyride.com and into Trailrunner software and got 2 more totally different results - one around 1000m and one around 500m - your guess is as good as mine as to how far we climbed :)

D

"It has to be all downhill from here to the finish"

We kept telling ourselves that from the feed station onwards... It didn't work.

Those last hills look really small on monkeywhippet's elevation profile though... I think his GPS must be broken!

Yep aussie Gav, that's me... Yeah brilliant ride, mile after mile of perfect cycling road laying itself out infront of you under a full moon. Some great group riding too - i am rubbish with names let alone forum aliases but you know who you are, and nice one with the beers at the end all

Highest hill was just outside of London, all downhill from there..

The video is finally up on ITV Local - cheesy and cliche ridden, but I stress I'm not a reporter/journo/producer-type!

http://www.itvlocal.com/london/londonlife/?player=LON_LondonLife_15&void=214181

@ danDNA you are right this is definitely not trip to argue about the elevational profile. i am just a sucker for stats. powertap data anybody?

My GPS said 770m at the end (based on barometric whatnots, so should be fairly accurate), but it also said something like 600m at the feed station so I'm a bit suspicious... It sure as hell felt like more than 170m of climbing from there to the end.

:)

Good piece.

Tommy the Ambassador.

for all KoM: going over a 10 cm speed hump every 20 m for 200 k accumulates to 1000 m elevation. bring on the polka dots.

Also, it makes your arse hurt a lot.

Great stuff, well done!

Nice to see my bike in it twice and me standing on the beach with Brett while Tommy was doing his 'thang'.

Good vid! Cheers for that Steves!

Oh, I've just looked through some of the photos and I saw lots of you on the road, just didn't know who you were. Did anyone see a girl on a pink Surly Steamroller with a pink courier bag? That was me.

And I wish I'd taken a leaf out of Hippy's book and checked my mileage before I got in the shower. I had 175 miles on the clock, which is my longest ride ever, but I'd quite like to have got it up to 300k!

All in all, the best DD I've done yet - no rain, beautiful moonlight all the way (I didn't end up needing the Petzl headtorch I found in a charity shop for 50p) and none of my usual low points (i.e. the first hour through Epping Forest; the hour after the feed stop; the last 20 miles). I raced a bloke on a Mercian down to the beach, and he offered to sell me my next fixie.

Is it me, or was it a lot smaller this year? And faster?

what to say. a really great ride that one - so much nicer than last year.

really enjoyed riding with fellow Team Etchingham co-founder and childhood buddy Tim, ( clintsmoker on this forum) and a lot of the regular and some new forum faces.

big respect goes out to Hippy and Sam for sucking it in and doing the extra miles. tim and me got to darsham station and realised trains from there were gonna be impossible. good laughs back at the beach though and a fair crack on the coach too.

happy that i live only a few miles from smithfield market. then back on the bike this morning for work and it was like it never happened. well, kinda.

really enjoyed riding more as a group this year with little stops here and there bringing us back together. nice one.

rpm, mr.smith - we got to hear the lowdown on the rest of the stag

Jonny, I'll let the (small) cat out of the bag. We abandoned the ride to Ipswich with 3 miles to go and caught a train from Westerfield. Not far to go agreed, but it saved on the rigmarole of trying to navigate round Ipswich with tired legs and brains. It was a stupidly hilly 31 miles, but probably a damn sight better than my "picturesque" 45 mile route!

I remember seeing you at the first garage stop. Nice bike.

Emilia, me and my friend were leap frogging you all night (we were all on gears). I think I also told you your batteries in your rear light were dead.

Jim you were the only person I saw who looked healthier at Dunwich than you did at Hackney.

I had more beer at Dunwich than I'd had at Hackney. Beer makes everything better. UUUMMMM BEER(dribble)!!

Ah thank you! I remember you. I did stop and change them eventually, but I was worried about being left behind by the rest of the bunch. Then I remembered that said bunch was probably a good 50 miles long, so there wasn't much chance of that!

WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT DID YOU DO TO HILLBILLY?

He only drinks cider! Ha! Busted!

Oh, and why am I not hungry yet? What's wrong with me?

loved it!

so much easier than oxford, and no cramp. felt as if I could have done another 20 miles on arrival at dunwich, not quite so lively an hour later ;)

Cornelius was buzzing on the beach:

Really excellent.

I'll be a Dunwich regular from now on.

Have no idea if i saw any of you chaps, but will be more widely social next time.Can't wait.

Lots of memories of this will linger for a long time, especially a case of my grey trousers and really bad splash back from the urinals in the feeding station.

Cheers
Thomas

Hey Em, did you spot us at the feedstop in the TV clip? sorry about my navigation on the way up to Ipswich. My brain was in need of bacon and beanzzzzzzzz......

Who fell off after that gravelled turn just near the end? I saw a great scrape on the road, a bike up against the kerb and a crowd of people including one guy with a green bike, gold deep V's and gold brakes spinning his front wheel.
There was a big crowd of people there, so I didn't stop to gawp.

That was a laugh.. totally blinded by the sun, down hill with a bit of speed, loose gravel road.. :)

Hope this person was ok!

If that was the black girl with the bandana on, that's Denise (sp?) she's a bit of a star. She gives her kid a ride to school on the back of that recumbent of hers! I used to see her pretty much every morning.

that was a different experience from last year. a sore knee and the beginnings of cramp were the only downsides towards the end, the early morning light made up for that though.
as for the stag do drinking beer eating prime meat products and only sleeping for a few hours afterward wasn't ideal post ride recovery :-) but i feel fine now compared to last year when i could hardly move.(probably due to doing longer rides)

did anyone else follow the yellow 'cycling event' signs that were nothing to do with the dynamo? we ended up south of buckfast hill but thanks to maps on phones and ex-couriers we got back on track, without this detour we would have missed 2 of essex's finest short skirted females fighting in a bush.

next year i might do it geared or only ride with fixed riders

hippy is right about the numbers, out of 3000 members the turnout was a bit small. people were doing iton mountainbikes with heavy wide tyres, fixed is far easier than dragging a mtb along

thanks for the ride guys. obviously it was great to ride with jonny boy but having a group of wise-crackers to hide behind when the going got tough was awesome. Just saw Tommy on the itv clip and i can't believe it was the same guy riding those last 20 miles with me. i quote "it wasn't too much of a challenge" now this guy carries his balls around in a f***ing wheelbarrow and we've just got to admire them!! lol