The Road to Home
The Magnificent Seven, Plus two support riders and one hell of a route planner!
What better way to get excited for the UCI World Road Racing Championships then getting the opportunity to be a part of the official flag relay from Innsbruck, Austria (Last year’s hosts) back to Harrogate.
My name is Scot Cranmer and with a bunch of merry men, that’s exactly what we did. Around the middle of July my CEO, Gary, asked me if I’d be interested in supporting Leeds Cares, a charity that we work for by doing the social media and covering the ride, little did I know at the time he was actually talking about me riding the mere 730 miles home in 7 days too.
It was time to dust off the bike, having not ridden it since I competed in Ironman two years ago and to get some miles in. With two rides under my belt and about 120 miles of saddle time it was time to go to work. We flew to Austria on 24th August to start our journey back carrying the official UCI Rainbow flag. We were honoured by collecting the flag from Andreas Klingler who is the CEO of the 2018 Innsbruck Tirol Championships. We enjoyed some good time in the saddle, riding close to and more than 100 miles (160km for the purists) each day and riding through some stunning scenery.
I’d like to give a special thank you to VeloSkin for the support of myself and the other riders with a little care package, we each received a tin of Chamois cream and some of the Soothing gel. I’ve never really done any form of long-distance riding before, let alone back to back days, so I needed all the help I could get. The chamois cream was just what the doctor ordered by the end of the week as you can imagine the nether regions were tender, but still intact! I also what to give a tip of the hat to the soothing gel, after a long day in the saddle in heat, the soothing gel applied after a shower was perfect for a bit of a refreshing feeling.
All in all these products have been fantastic and are well worth having, if you’re riding for any extended periods of time in the saddle, or even at all!
