L2P Off Road 2015 Day 1 : London to Brighton

London to Paris Off Road 2015

It was an early start .... The car was packed the night before and the alarm was set for 5:30am. By 7:30 we were at the start, checked in and raring to go along with 78 other mad mountain bikers.

The route was very different to what we expected, as we were expecting a rerun of the London to Brighton off road we did last year but were pleasantly surprised to find it was different. It felt like we were chasing the clock all day as the map had expected check point times on it and we were just about meeting them but only just. We arrived on the sea front in Brighton at 4pm and were rushed from our bikes to the coach without even stopping to get our breath.

One thing i will learn is not to drink caffeine energy drinks as they really didn't agree with me and my heart was racing all morning making riding hard work, i was slightly better in the afternoon so will hopefully survive the next couple of days but wont be drinking any more.

At the top of the enormous hill just outside Brighton ...... You can just see the sea in the background :-)

So Day 1 done ..... 59 miles in 8.5hrs (6:30hrs riding time ..... Although my Garmin seems to think I'm standing still when I'm actually just riding very slowly, sorry i mean as fast as i can, up a steep hill, so we perhaps didn't have that much rest as the hill to Brighton is very long !!) and an average of 9mph ... Not bad for the first day.

Funniest bit of the day : At lunch time Stu admitted that he thought it was Sat 7th today and so was cross with everyone as we had all forgotten it was his birthday .... until I pointed out it was only Sat 6th so he still had a day to go and we weren't all being mean ..... it cheered us both up and gave me something to laugh at for the rest of the afternoon :-)

Here is the link to some more photos from the event : https://goo.gl/photos/HuE8FsTQCDWSk1NbA

Here is what the route looked like