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The 2009 Maggies London Night Hike

Last weekend myself and six friends/colleagues took part in the Maggies London Night Hike, a 20 miles sponsored night hike around the streets of London, to raise money for Maggies cancer centres.

We started out at 9pm from City Hall, near Tower Bridge, and walked until about 7am, with various stops en route to drink coffee and visit London Open House weekend buildings, such as the Royal Geographical Society, the Channel 4 building and Horse Guards.

We made it pretty much intact, although we picked up a few blisters between us (I was unscathed, thankfully). It was fairly tough with the distance and the fatigue (we’d all done a days work already that day so walking all night was tiring stuff). A couple of team members were certainly a little grouchy towards the end – but then we all have our ways of coping with sleep deprivation :-)

We raised in total just under £5000 for the charity, which is the most important thing, and something I’m very proud of. We also got to accomplish something, and see some cool sights, some of which I documented through the monumental struggle of lugging my SLR along the course of the route (!)

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Our motley crew ready to get going.

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Our little jaunt on the London Eye.

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Some of the sights we saw on our journey.

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Some of the rest stops we took on the way (love the last pic of Fash looking bleak – that was at mile 18 or so) :)

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Arriving at the finish line!

You can see the full flickr gallery of the hike, or even view the annotated route on everytrail below:

Maggies night hike 2009 at EveryTrail

London to Brighton bike ride

Yesterday I decided to do set myself a bit of a fitness challenge – ride from my flat in Limehouse (east London) to Brighton seafront, along the route of the British Heart Foundation’s annual event. Why this route? It avoids major roads and is very scenic. And I’d like to do this charity event next year, and wanted to see if I was up for it :)

So I set off at 10:40am with the route programmed into my Garmin Edge 705 (you can see the route I used here: Limehouse to Brighton route), my camelback on my back with a couple of energy bars, and my camera, not really sure if I was going to make it at all.

Well I did! I must say when the pain really set in around mile 35, I had my doubts. My legs were burning, I was very low on energy and clearly hadn’t brought enough food with me. However once I found a newsagent, bought some snickers bars and took a lunch break I felt much better and found my second wind. The last 10 miles were torture as they involved crossing Burgess Hill, a tortuous ascent, especially after riding 50 miles! I remember the feeling of dread when I saw it:

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But somehow I got up and over and was rewarded with the views!:

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Shortly after that I got my first glimpse of the sea and I knew I was home and dry :)

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It was at this point that I recorded the rather cheesy video you see before you:

Finally, after riding 63 miles in just over 7 hours, I arrived, elated, at Brighton beach :)

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I hung around to see the sunset, then hopped on the train back to London. Job done!

Sunset on Brighton beach

If you are interested in the actual route I took and the detailed stats (speed, heart rate, etc) you can find it here: garmin activity log – London to Brighton ride. You can also see the flickr set of the images I took here: flickr set – London to Brighton ride.

London to Brighton bike ride at EveryTrail