Cycle Challenge Finale

The Final Day

Some very weary bodies arrived bright and early to finish off the challenge in the middle of Eastbourne's shopping centre. We set up five bikes, a display and a table with various activities for the public such as blood pressure, vertical jump, lung function and the thermal camera. Seven bikes continued running up in Eastbourne Sports Centre foyer.

Sadly the saddles hadn't got any more comfortable overnight and most the group had at least 3-4hours to complete before 5.30pm.



As if cycling and fundraising wasn’t enough the students set up physiological testing stations in the Arndale shopping centre and educated, tested and measured the public, young and old on exercise and health related parameters ranging from standard laboratory measures such as heart rate and blood pressure monitoring, lung function, and anaerobic power, to the less familiar cognitive function and thermoregulatory analyses utilising stroop tests and thermal cameras. The profile of Peru 2013 was certainly raised by this final day’s exhibition and the students were a credit to the University of Brighton and the BSc (Hons) Sport and Exercise Science degree.




For all those Harry fans out there, yes he sweated and yes he was a broken man for a while. But like everyone else he got through it eventually.


At 5.30pm the total of hours accumulated was calculated and we had completed 83 hours on top of the previous 139 and 133 hours, totalling 10200km (265km further than required). That's roughly 1,450,400 pedal revolutions 201,600 kcal burned (equal to ~2,000 bananas, or for the less healthy ~400 Big Mac burgers!) A brilliant effort by all!


Celebrations were slightly muted as most were looking forward to sleeping or as much glucose as possible.

After completing the challenge, if you feel you like donate towards the rebuilding and renovation of the Peruvian school in Huarcapay, please visit JustGiving. If you have donated THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

Please keep following our blog to see how we get on in Peru!

Cycling Day 2

So Day 2 of the Peru Cycle Challenge.....

The morning after the day before. Some very weary bodies again arrived at 8am, sore legs and bums were the norm, with many bringing cushions for the saddles today!!

After a brilliant daily total from everyone yesterday, 17hrs up on the target, everyone continued to work incredibly hard to keep the total going.

The swimming dream team of Alice Marchant, Alice Smyth and Sophie Thrussell put in a tremendous effort first thing, each completing 2 hours in one stint!

Brilliant effort girls!!

Alex Nichols enjoyed it so much today, we can quote him
 "I want to be a professional cyclist"

Senior Lecturers and Staff (Alan, Mark, Neil, Oli and Ben) were seen popping in between lecturing to do their hours. Rumour has it, Alan was lecturing on a bike this afternoon!!

The prize for the most unconventional cycling technique most definitely goes to Kane Reed, not sure he would quite make David Brailsford's Team Sky but a fantastic effort from him though none the less!

Great effort Kane!

Padded shorts were a key piece of equipment for many today and were seen on Rebecca Relf, Harry McCullough, Dominic Hedges, Hannah Webb and Alan Richardson among others!

Neil Maxwell and Oli Gibson both managed to watch an entire film on their Ipads today, thats one way of making the time go by!!

Oli and Ben hard at work on the bikes

The consumption of pasta has been at an all time high, with students using our sports nutrition knowledge to help fuel us. Chocolate, cakes and biscuits were also seen to be very popular with everyone!

A special mention must go to Lottie Thompson, who when not cycling provided endless amounts of food (well Jaffa Cakes and Chocolate!)

It has been great fun again today with everyone putting in a fantastic effort.

The final total today was 139 hours, keeping us ahead of the overall target.

Back for day 3 tomorrow......

Cycling Day 1

The Cycle Challenge: Day 1

The wheels of the 12 bikes started turning at 8am on Thursday and we were still going at 9pm.

Some were already looking a little worn after the first hour. It wasn't long until the feasibility of the task was being questioned with the standard answer being "It was a good idea at the time". The enthusiastic trepidation soon turned to a sea of thoroughly unhappy individuals, except the ever jovial Jacob Miles to enjoy the challenge, completing 7 hours of cycling. 




















Some students spent much of the time ensuring their energy stores were appropriately managed.

Overall we accumulated 133 hours of cycling between us - 17 hours more than our target! Hopefully we will have recovered well enough for the same tomorrow....?

If you feel like we deserve some sponsorship please donate here or come down and see us. 
Remember the money raised will go towards renovating and rebuilding a Peruvian School in Huarcapay near Cusco.

The Cycle Challenge: 9,945km in 3 days

The Cycle Challenge: 9,945km in 3 days

As the single sponsored event for the Peru 2013 Project we thought we would make it a hard one. We arranged to cycle the equivalent distance from Eastbourne to Cuzco, Peru. This equates to 9,945km. We are doing this distance on twelve static bikes, accumulating the distance between the 29 in our group. Each individual cycling for a total of ~12 hours over 3 days.

Cycling Rota for one day of the three.

The first two days will be completed on Thursday and Friday 11th & 12th October from 8am to 9pm in the University of Brighton Sports Centre, Eastbourne, with twelve bikes constantly running. The final day (Saturday 13th October) will be in the Eastbourne Arndale Centre between 9 and 5.30pm, with five bikes running throughout the day. Over these days we will also have a stand explaining the project and students will be running some basic physiological tests for health screening, cognitive function tests and thermal imaging of the cyclists and public if they wish.

Sport and Exercise Science students training the University of Brighton Welkin Labs

The proceeds from this sponsored effort will go towards the volunteering aspect of the Peru 2013: Learning Through Adventure Project. Please see our first blog for more details. We would really appreciate any sponsorship received - please go to our justgiving page if you would like to sponsor.  

Keep following our posts to see how we get on with the cycling!