RideLondon-Surrey 100 Sponsor Update

A big big thank you to all my sponsors for your kind support towards my RideLondon 100 mile ride in aid of Diabetes research. I am so pleased to report in this update that we’ve reached 90% of our target!

As the Tour de France enters its final week, I am myself just over two weeks away from my Prudential RideLondon-Surrey 100 event to pick up the cycling baton :).

My training has been progressing well. I’ve continued my Thursday night ride out with the club on the 20-30 mile rides and for the past two week we've been doing a Tuesday evening ride of 40 miles to help members train for a club 100 miler at the end of August, how fortuitous!  With the exception of last weekend, which I had off to attend a Christening and am thus recording as a ‘rest day’, I have also been getting in a 50-70 mile weekend ride to build my longer distance stamina.

The video recording using the new camera I’ve acquired for the event and which you may have learned of in my previous update or via my blogging, has now been put through its paces such that I’m reasonably comfortable with its position on the bike and think I now know how to use it - so a good start. I’ve purchased additional batteries to ensure it lasts the distance and the next challenge is working out how to attach my entry number to the handle bars without then obscuring the lens .. now that would be a bit of a disaster! If you’re interested in seeing some of the test ride footage then click one of the links below:

• Les Maillots Jaunes - possibly my favourite clip in which I’ve added a musical backing track (Kraftwerk’s ’Tour de France’ .. how apt I thought). Critical reviews have been mixed - as you’ll see from my write up - but see what you think http://tourdefitness.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/maillots-jaunes.html
• Kelly’s Heros - here I was trying out a new mounting and left the background sound in. We also had Kelly, a fellow rider, join us with a helmet mounted camera. There is one down hill section where I’ve been able to have her and my video’s running together showing me descending both from my and her viewpoint. Apologies in advance for my language at the bottom of the hill, where I almost come to grief - I meant to edit this out but during the final edit this was somehow overlooked! http://tourdefitness.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/kellys-heros.html

I have now received my official Registration Form and confirmed rider number 25368. I will be starting from Area Blue, Wave Q at 07:55 on Sunday 10th August - the logistics surrounding this ride are incredible. Jason, my RideLondon buddie starts 10 minutes ahead of me from a different area so we’re now working out at which point along the route we can meet up. With 24,000 cyclists this, I feel, will be some challenge! If you are interested in seeing the the 100 route we are to take, you can check this out here. http://www.prudentialridelondon.co.uk/The_Events/Prudential_RideLondon-Surrey_100/Route.htm

I will drop you another update before we leave, and as ever, you can continue to follow the preparations and my general ramblings via my blog updates here http://tourdefitness.blogspot.co.uk .. and if you have any questions, please ‘ping’ me :)

Thank you again for your support

Jonathan