What is RAB?

The Ride Across Britain cycling challenge is organised by Threshold Sports, with the total distance racking up to just shy of 1,000 miles over 9 days in the saddle. Ride Across is aimed at anyone from the amateur cyclist right through to the Ironman pros. With thousands raised for different charities each year, RAB is an amazing challenge for any cyclist and definitely one for the bucket list.

As a company of keen cyclists, we are fond of doing the (odd) sportive ourselves. In the spirit of challenging himself and raising money for one of the partner charities, The MS society, our NonExec director Joe Nicholson recently took on RAB in September 2022 for the second time. We are all really inspired by Joe for doing this epic ride once again. You can visit Joe's JustGiving page for The MS Society here and still donate. 

See.Sense Sponsorship

We are proud to have sponsored Joe (and the four other riders in his group) with See.Sense BEAM lights along with some accessories to make their journeys brighter.

See.Sense lights are the only bike lights in the world which adapt to your ride environment and adjusts to provide real-time safety information, so BEAM was perfect to keep the riders visible as well as guide their paths on the road.

Over To Joe (Q&A)

It's now over to Joe to hear how he got on during RAB 2022: The highs, the (hopefully not many) lows, and any kit recommendations to help make 1,000 miles a little bit easier.

1. How dId you train for RAB?
   
   Since the start of the year I have cycled 3,500KM excluding the ride, plus commuting to school - approx 90km per week.We started off doing the 40/50/60KM ride and then did longer rides plus 160km back to back rides.The highlights were a) Cycle down to the Isle of Wight and then do the Round the Island route, and b) Cycle Newhaven, overnight ferry to Dieppe and cycle from Dieppe to Calais.
   
   
2. How was the camping throughout the 10 days? 
   
   
   The camping was ok. The first night you do not sleep well however after that I was ok. You may sleep for 1-2 hours, wake up and turn over.
   
   
3. What was your toughest moment of the ride?
   
   Day 7 from Perth to Strathdon was very tough! 193KM, 2,330M of climbing, cold and very stiff Northerly wind. The climb up to the Glenshee ski resort was brutal - 20% of the field did not make it and had to be picked up.
   
   
4. Any essential cycling kit you would recommend for RAB?
   
   I would recommend the See Sense Bar Bag - no long ride is ever the same without it! It transformed the experience for all the riders. I would also recommend the Castelli shake-dry - it is an amazing bit of kit. Amazing in the rain, you can ride it in all day and very small to pack down. Expensive but worth it.
   
   
5. Do you have any tips for anyone thinking of taking on RAB for the first time?
   
   Start as early as you can with the training. Commuting every day helps but you have to build up to be able to do 100 mile rides back to back.

Interested?

Many thanks to Joe for the guest blog piece. If you're interested in taking on the challenge for 2024 then you can look at the different packages by clicking here - plenty of time for training!