Team Midland 24hr trackathon 2008 |
13th/14th November 2008 - Pudsey 24 hour
It's all Graham's fault! He started it Miss.
A long, long time away in a galaxy far, far away. Darth Hewson contemplated that his life had insufficient challenges. Organising Team Midland and being big cheese sales rep with a Jag to keep on the road just wasn't enough.
And so the Lord of The Dark Side decided that TMR would pedal The Force around the indoor velodromes of the UK. Things went so swimmingly that the idea lodged in his mind that there was enough movement in The Force to arrange a 24 hour marathon for Children in Need.
And thus it came to be. Thursday 13th November at 10:00pm through to Friday 14th at 10:00pm. Location: Calshot.
Use the links at the top of this page show you where to go to donate funds, to find out how it will all work on the day and provide an information sheet.
Additionally, there is the schedule (which will be updated every hour during the event itself) which shows the teams + laps + distance within each hour, plus the cummulative figures. So anyone will be able to get an up to date view of progress. And - there are links to information on all the teams.
How to donate? Go to www.justgiving.com/tmpudsey24hr
Update 15-Nov-2008. So....what happened? It was an amazing day. A whole 24 hours from which people came away with a whole bucketload of memories.
With over 50 riders and helpers volunteering from differing parts of the country, they worked together to get that darned bear round a track like it's never been done before (which is actually true - it hasn't!).
To cover the first eighteen hours, six teams did three sessions of an hour each. For the remaining six hours we were joined by two additional teams and the last two hours were broken into 30 minute slots to give everyone a change to ride again.
In the end, the bear was transported an amazing 553.05 miles.
That's 6,228 laps of the track.
(From the Useless Statistics Dept the komputta says that a total of 49 riders took part, and between them they collectively did 40,882 laps ie 3,630 miles ! Amazingly, the only incident was a broken spoke on Peachy's rear wheel.)
There are still dribbles of dosh coming in, but the final fundraising figure looks likely to be £9,000.
There's footage on the following link from the BBC which they took at a short session on the Thursday evening. It's worth watching right to the end for the Wise Words from Sir AC (and you can play "Spot The Graham"). http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7728336.stm
And there's an article here on the EveryDay Cycling website:- http://www.everydaycycling.com/edc/news/news2008/20081114_calshot_24hr_marathon.aspx
Regards, Rich.
Southampton Echo 14th September 2008-
Update 15-May-2009. Here we go - the official receipt from the BBC:-
Team Midland Racing are riding for:-