Reaction to the announcement of my end to end ride.

Well, since I officially announced that I was going to ride lands end to John O'groats (lejog) on my penny farthing the reaction I have had has been fantastic!

I posted on twitter and Facebook as well as telling friends in person. Everyone was really interested in my plans. Generally, my family think I'm a bit mad, twitter people are convinced I'm a bit mad and friends from my cycling club must think I'm superman as they are encouraging me to try for a record time.

The penny farthing record of 5 days 8 hours and 15 minutes is not something I will be going for! I will be more than happy just to complete the ride, 14 days will do me. Even at that pace it's about 70 miles a day.

Within a few hours of telling people about the lejog my justgiving page had received plenty of donations, some from people who I have no idea who they are who must have seen a retweet about the ride on twitter. I'd like to say thanks to anyone who has donated, it's very kind of you.

If anyone would like to donate, here's the link.. www.justgiving.com/Dave-Preece3

During this week I've been cycling quite a bit, on Sunday I did 76 miles on the penny farthing with my friend Mickey , who is going to be joining me on the lejog ride. Mickey will be on a normal, modern road bike but he will be carrying all of our kit. We are not having a support vehicle.

Tuesday night after work I was out on the penny farthing again. I rode out to a local 10 mile time trial and raced it against modern tt bikes. Obviously I came last, but my time of 39 minutes for a 10 mile course that is quite hilly wasn't too bad.

Wednesday was my day off work so I went out on my modern road bike for about 50 miles. I intend to do most of my training for the lejog ride on this modern bike. I don't want to put too many miles onto the penny farthing in the build up as repairing any breakdowns is not as easy on the penny farthing as it is for a standard road bike.

The other training I am doing is walking, on steep hills I will have to push the penny farthing so I thought it might be an idea to get used to walking a lot!

Tonight I popped out for a quick ride on my fixed gear bike after work and Tomorrow, Sunday, I'll go out on my road bike again for about 4 hours. At this time of year the training is easy as the weather is still being kind!

Well I guess that's enough of an update for now, thanks for reading and come back soon!

Lands End to John O'Groats

Well I've not been on here for ages so I needed a good reason to get blogging again.. I've talked about this for long enough and now I've actually got some plans in place to do it. In April 2015 I'm going to ride my penny farthing from Lands End to John O'Groats. That's about 1000 miles and I'm going to do it in 14 days.

Between now and the ride in April I will update this blog with how my plans are developing and how my training is going. When the ride finally gets here I hope to have a bit of time each night to post daily updates. This will depend on internet connection, phone battery, and my physical ability to blog after riding a penny farthing all day!

I've decided on doing the end to end as I've pretty much achieved what I wanted to achieve regarding racing the penny farthing. At long last I managed to win a big race. Earlier in 2014 I won the pennies in the park race which , luckily for me, has gained the official title of the British Open penny farthing championship. I've not managed to win the Smithfield London Nocturne but it's a race I may have to let go as it's so short and doesn't really suit my strengths. I'll keep entering the race but I'm pretty sure it's one I will not win.

So, back to the end to end ride. I'm going to be raising money for the national deaf children's society. My wife was born deaf so that's why I have chosen this charity.

I've set up a just giving page should anyone feel generous enough to make a donation, here's the link to it.  www.justgiving.com/Dave-Preece3

Thanks for reading! Updates will follow!!