I awoke on Saturday, the day before the 110 mile cycle with some excitement and a bit of anxiety about getting all my things ready for the big day ahead. My brother is a bit of a hero to me and I trust his technical abilities when it comes to bike maintenance. After all, he’s jumped using a heavy Raleigh Grifter, raced BMXs on the track at Southampton, did Freestyle ‘cherrypickers’ on his luminous pink bmx, done many a mountain bike course and now owns a road bike! Nothing to worry about!

I turned up at his house about lunch time and we got to work after a bacon buttie prepared by ‘MeJulie’, his wife. David was prepared, he’d downloaded, printed off and laminated the instructions on how to tune up gears. He’d also been on line and very generously purchased me 2 more puncture resistant tyres (Continental GatorSkins) from Wiggle.

We removed both the tyres from my little Tirban 3 (I’ve got 650 wheels versus most people’s larger 700s!) and I set about getting the new tyres on… The first one was seriously tight but I got there with a bit of careful tyre lever action. Then it came to the second tyre which I very quickly realised was clearly labelled 650 but was really a 700! So back on with the old tyre again!

Then I explained to him about the issue I’d been having with my gears jumping when I was going uphill so we read up on the process to set up the gears… It took a long time to read and re-read the instructions and work out which was the H and which was the L screw… check it out for yourself: http://www.parktool.com/blog/repair-help/rear-derailler-adjustments-derailleur Well, it took a lot longer than expected to sort that issue and then we had to change the front dérailleur: http://www.parktool.com/blog/repair-help/front-derailleur-adjustments. We were in a bit of shock when we checked the clock and realised that it had taken us 3 and a half hours to achieve success! I had to head home to take my dogs out so I left David merrily fixing up his bike gears and I hoped it wouldn’t take him too long.

After altering the settings on my bike I thought it would be useful to go out and test the new set up and so I agreed to do a 10 mile cycle with my friend Dave. As I arrived at the Malletsheugh Inn, near Newton Mearns it was raining! Fortunately enough it went off but I was delighted to borrow a jacket as the temperature had dropped significantly over the last few days and it was seriously chilly. We did the Glasgow Cycle Club Time Trial course and saw a lovely rainbow before a quick change and some pasta carb loading at the Beefeater in Newton Mearns. Spinning the legs at average 15.2mph felt good and reasonably fresh despite last weeks 18 mile run… the new gear set up seemed to be doing the trick. Only problem was the bike was manky!

Sadly it was about 9pm when I finally heard from my brother again confirming he’d finally finished fixing his Specialized Allez – that was a serious maintenance marathon! Lesson learned… don’t leave it til the last minute to sort your equipment before a big event and where possible employ professional help!

It was nearly midnight by the time I’d washed my bike, changed my cleats to new ones, loaded the car, got all my food and liquid supplies along with my waterproofs, spare top and leggings ready for the big day to follow. I was so excited I couldn’t sleep and posted on facebook “Has Santa been yet?!”