The idea to do the ride came about, over a few beers, by a couple of us back in January 2007. We both wanted to ride the length of the Leeds to Liverpool canal, which runs through our home town of Shipley in West Yorkshire, and wondered if we could do it one day. We decided to ask around a few of our friends and see if they would be interested in joining us....after a week or so we had five other lads who said they'd like to give it a try.
So, with a team of seven, we started to organise weekly training rides along our local stretch of the towpath to get us all in shape for the challenge. We decided on a date for the ride, Saturday June 30th. Our thinking behind this was that the days are longest in June, this would give us plenty of daylight hours to do it in....we didn't want to be riding in the dark. We also decided that we would make it a sponsored ride and raise some money for a local cancer care organisation...Hospice at Home.
The following story will explain how we set about the task, getting fit, finding sources of information (via the internet) and planning the ride because we knew that if we were to do it, we would have to plan it in detail.
We'll put all our sources of information etc. on the blog at some point so that anyone out there who would like to do the ride (in one day or more) can, hopefully, use it to their benefit.
Oh, and the reason we're called Team Aldi is because we buy most of our cycling gear and accessories from our local Aldi supermarket. We highly recommend it...and you can't beat them on price!
So, with a team of seven, we started to organise weekly training rides along our local stretch of the towpath to get us all in shape for the challenge. We decided on a date for the ride, Saturday June 30th. Our thinking behind this was that the days are longest in June, this would give us plenty of daylight hours to do it in....we didn't want to be riding in the dark. We also decided that we would make it a sponsored ride and raise some money for a local cancer care organisation...Hospice at Home.
The following story will explain how we set about the task, getting fit, finding sources of information (via the internet) and planning the ride because we knew that if we were to do it, we would have to plan it in detail.
We'll put all our sources of information etc. on the blog at some point so that anyone out there who would like to do the ride (in one day or more) can, hopefully, use it to their benefit.
Oh, and the reason we're called Team Aldi is because we buy most of our cycling gear and accessories from our local Aldi supermarket. We highly recommend it...and you can't beat them on price!
2 comments:
I would like to do this ride but did not think that the canal towpath was open to cyclists along its full length (as per British Waterways permit).
Did you have special permission or simply take your chances?
interesting reading, a friend and I are going to attempt this ride over 2-3 days soon, he wants to cycle there and back though! I think that is very ambitious!!!
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