Audax rides

I get that but as hippy points out, cost of everything plus getting a wheel built is a significant barrier for me and probably others. Much cheaper and easier to have a £60 light, battery pack from amazon and a top tube bag for emergency charging.

Tbh I’d love a dynamo wheelset but like a lot of bike related things, cost plus initial “what the fuck is all this/what am I looking for/why have they made it so technical” has put me off so far.

Someone should probably start a dynamo lights thread.

The convenience of my dynamo power is worth far more to me than £s.

Not having my front light suddenly run out of juice again during a fast descent in the pitch dark at 4am is worth quite a bit to me. Did not enjoy that.

I bought a new SP hub on eBay for £50, had it built by @broken_777 for £74 including a rim, spokes, tape and building, and I got some b&m lights on here for £50.

I thought that was pretty cheap and I gave myself an imaginary pat on the back

To be fair, my Exposure lights have battery level indicators, but even so I've been looking at the yellow light on the commute home for three nights now without getting around to charging it. Do this before a ride out of town and it's not so fun.

I've just put together my dynamo setup, and i have been kind of blindly ordering things trying to put off exactly how much it 's all costing..
It's a fairly expensive route to go down but worth it imo for peace of mind for lights and Garmin etc.
There is nothing worse than your lights dying when you're out in the sticks. It happened to me on a night ride recently, hence the dynamo build.

SP SV-9 - £99
Hunt 24h rim - £75 (based on RRP of the full wheelset)
Halo db spokes - £25
Wheel build labour - £45
B&M lights front and back - £132.05 (delivered from bike.discount)
Total - £376.05

You could probably find the hub cheaper, go for a cheaper rim and maybe the spokes too to get it around the £300 mark. Learn how to build your own wheels too i guess and about £250 would see it done. I've not come across cheaper lights than on bike.discount.

Hunt 24h rim - £75 (based on RRP of the full wheelset)

Halo db spokes - £25
Wheel build labour - £45

None of these costs are exclusive to dynamo setups though.

I get it though. I have a working wheel now, so getting a dynamo wheel seems the biggest cost.

I should probably start looking more serious at offers, commutes are getting dark.

I still have hundreds of pounds worth of battery lights so I'm not exclusive to the dynamo club. Depends which bike I'm riding.

Not having my front light suddenly run out of juice again during a fast descent in the pitch dark at 4am is worth quite a bit to me. Did not enjoy that.

I've had my dynamo light fail on a descent (a combination of water ingress and hitting a bump in the road), that's not fun either.

Having one light (whatever type it is) is a single point of failure.

For LEL/PBP length rides I had two 4xAA powered B&M Ixon lights. Most of the time having one on, on low, was good enough for night riding, sometimes I'd need to move it to the higher setting if I was in the sticks and moonlight wasn't good enough. On descents I'd generally have one light on low and one on high.

It also meant that if the batteries started to go in one (I could easily see the LED doing its red/green flashing) I'd move to the other light being the primary and then I could change the batteries at the next control.

For the qualifying rides (or just other Audaxes) I did prefer a dynamo setup but those rides (well, PBP at least) require a backup lighting system to be shown at the bike inspection. Some times you can just get away with wafting another light under the inspectors nose but being risk averse I just went for a dual light setup and it was waved through without question.

I found my Supernova triple was fine for everything on TBPR although I did have a USB rechargeable spare - a little 200 lumen Moon light - as required by the regs. Never had to use it, but it's small and light so there's no real reason not to take it along just in case. On the Jura Brevet 600km ride I ended up using @Cycliste's spare front and rear lights after both of mine packed up, and I didn't have any spares. Won't make that mistake again.

I supplement my Supernova with an Exposure helmet light for when I'm doing 4kph up some fucking gravel fucking climb. Even when moving fast enough for the Supernova to light up, it's still nice on rough roads to have a helmet light for picking better lines.

Off road I rely on batteries - a couple of Ay-Up lights, one wide angle on the bars, one narrow beam on the helmet. They're from Oz, so I'm assuming you'll approve. They worked well on the One Night In Thetford 12 hour race.

I've never used them but my mate has had them for years. I was talking gravel. For MTB racing I used similar setup you've got with wider angle bar light (and I think lower power) and narrow beam helmet light. I think I still have my old Vistalite setup in Oz. Back when most people had NiMH and HID was the bomb.

Did a DiY 300 yesterday, and noticed I was on a marked cycle route for a bit. Now, I'm not sure who they are targeting with this route....several sections of 20-25% climbs and descents, not exactly family friendly.

3 Attachments

Pretty! where is it?

The one at the bottom is Toll Road out of Porlock, well worth the £1. Middle one is dropping down Countisbury Hill towards Lynmouth, and the top is looking across Croyde beach. It really was spectacular, but considerably harder than intended as I forgot that there was 50km of flat cycle path.

LRM Calendar:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vSNb7P-COVwvC33mCeCUWvAYwFkAk7aOZdHk9rbg4Kyar_lRx2epDSQ8FwW6VKlXiNiHPCqts0VnyRs/pubhtml?gid=1480200001&single=true

Put in a pre-registration for the Wild Atlantic Way Audax next June. 2200km gulp

Ah, a short one to start the year, yeah? ;)

I'm holding off entering anything, trying to keep my holidays in place and waiting for the CTT calendar.

You haz mudguards? :)

Yeah, that's gonna be sopping wet

Moonrakers and Sunseekers 300km starts this Friday at 10pm in Bristol.

Previously there was a waiting list, but a few places have opened up for last minute entries.

Anyone joining?

Well. I've just entered. Thank you very much!

The event description still has the waiting list blurb, wondering if I should book trains anyway.

Been booked in for months. Should be fun.

As of this morning, the status was this:
"I've been kindly informed by those who can't attend, and as such everyone on the waiting list has got a place and there are a few cards left over in case anyone has been 'umming and arring', now's your chance."

I expect Will did't change the sign-up blurb, and that you'll get an email from him shortly letting you know that you're in.

A 300 in this weather starting at night?

Fuuuuuck that