Sponsor me! Paris to London suffer fest.

tl;dr https://believe.in/fundraising/DavidKitchen/319

Last year I got hit by a bout of sciatica. It knocked me off the bike for months and had me squealing with pain. I only started riding again at the start of this summer. Even now, a 10 mile ride leaves me bruised by the end of it. This 200 mile ride is going to hurt a lot because of the sciatica, it will be a suffer fest for me no matter how much I train.

I'm terribly slack on keeping up with the exercises, stretches and rehab physio. So I noticed an event, and have committed to an unmoveable date, and am going to do a long ride (for someone who's barely been riding this last year).

The ride is Paris to London.

Which is obviously the wrong way, uphill, into the wind, and Paris is a nicer arrival point than the outer edges of London. Oh well.

Anyhow the ride is: https://techbikers.com/

And they're raising money to help build schools in far flung places such as Nepal. Because £50k builds a school there, and in the UK it would barely build a wall, in a library, and even then it wouldn't put the books on the shelves.

So I'm being sponsored, par for the course for these rides, and in this case my conscientiousness means that it guilts me into not quitting when the pain kicks in, and forces me to do that training.

**Every penny raised goes to charity, not a penny goes to admin or payment fees.

https://believe.in/fundraising/DavidKitchen/319**

A bit about the TechBikers group: It's basically a load of techies, geeks, entrepreneurs... the cream of the crop of the London startup scene. Between us we have something like 300k Twitter followers, and insane social media reach... so as you might imagine, you'll be hearing about the ride quite a bit, and because of http://microcosm.app/ I'm basically one of that lot and will be representing.

TechBikers is also surprising in that the vast majority of the riders I've spoken to are not cyclists. Actually, so far the majority don't even own a bike. So this is going to be damn amusing.

What that means is that we really would appreciate help from those working in the bike industry. We need nutrition on the road, we need helmets, hell we even need bikes.

If you're in the bike industry and can help in any way, please contact me: david@buro9.com

One final thing, I promised Clive that if I hit my target of £1k I'll put tags back on the football thread. At least until people screw it up again.

Many thanks, greatly appreciated, thanks for putting up with another "please sponsor me" things on here,

David

PS: You know, I've never actually done a sponsored thing before. First time for everything.

subscribed

One final thing, I promised Clive that if I hit my target of £1k I'll put tags back on the football thread. At least until people screw it up again.
I pledge -£1,000,000.

I've just passed a third of my goal... slow going.

If anyone would like to help support children's literacy and my little ride: https://believe.in/fundraising/DavidKitchen/319

How is this project coming along anyway; not overwhelmingly worried about you reaching your target, you can do that in 5 min if you wanted to... I'm thinking the project as a whole???

You must know something I don't if you think I can reach the goal in 5 minutes! I feel I'm struggling even to get to the halfway point.

On training, it's been hard but enjoyable. A 50m excursion last week showed that longer rides with the odd hill still hurt my leg, so I'm off to the gym today. Sucks. But is exactly the kind of discipline I need.

As to organising the ride and the corporate sponsorship, that's on-track. The logistics less so. Turns out that when you have 60-80 people riding together that accommodation proves to be a hell of an issue. No-one wants their hotel fully booked for just one day of a weekend.

The guys behind techbikers want to double the size each year, but I can't see how they're going to do that without bedding people down in sports centres or something.

It's fascinating to watch and be part of something so disorganised and ambitious whilst still focusing on the personal goals of making that final push to fitness after Sciatica wiped me out for so long.

David - I'll certainly add to the pot - look forward to hearing about how you get on.

Oh my, didn't quite realise the magnitude of this ride, 60-80 people all in... that's a lot! Anyway, I was merely implying that you're not exactly broadcasting the need for sponsorship, or did I miss something? If needed, I'm sure the forum will have you covered in a heartbeat. Best of luck on all accounts.

Oh I really need sponsorship, but I've been a bit distracted by Microcosm (I've written some fantastic self-writing code this week) and setting up a cycle club.

But...

I REALLY NEED SPONSORSHIP.

Later today, when I've figured out the cycle club stuff, and will send an email announcing it, I'll also beat the drum on Microcosm and sponsorship.

I hate that most of my communication right now is "Give me your money". I really don't want money... but I do want all of this stuff to all work brilliantly.

You're good people David ;)

donated.

i would donate, but don't want to contribute to the reinstatement of tags

Donate anyway. I'm too lazy to actually re-enable tags.

Unless you're pro-tags, in which case please live under the illusion I might enable tags and donate.

As I'm jobless, can I give you a supportive hug on Wednesday?

This doesn't help the illiterate to read.

if you tell them that if they don't learn to read they'll get a sweaty hug from Iain too then it might.

"If you tell them that if they don't learn to read they'll get a sweaty hug from Iain too then it might."

Stick and carr... Like the idea, stick, that will teach them!

Donated...
What's the name for a load of techies?
A geekery of techies?

(you using maps or some 'device' to navigate?)
(what about Strava segments?)

A geekery is probably right.

The ride has a team of 9 taking care of all logistics and providing ride support. Effectively a broom van and daily route guide. The routes are pretty direct, so it's just a case of riding in a straight line for a long time.

I think others are planning all kinds of gadgets, but I'm just going to point the bike in the right direction and ride. If I get lost it will be fun.

the techbikers ride to paris was just featured in an email from believe.in.

Pics or it didn't happen...

http://us6.campaign-archive2.com/?u=0b525f1b77a67c621e6aef259&id=e5ac97c90e&e=331ec0c81e

Well done David, by the way.

What's it like to be a TechBiker? - 2013 Paris to London Teaser - YouTube

I'm nowhere to be seen.

But perhaps when the full length version is made.

To be fair, my jersey didn't fit me so on day two I wore the LFGSS sharkpits jersey and I doubt they'd cut me into the video on that. Day one I was at the front the whole time and the video guy wasn't.

Day three was a suffer-fest, who knew about Westerham Hill?

Westerham Hill is a real bugger. I didn't know that was part of the route... I'll be on the fundraising site as soon as I get home.

Very well done!