26 November 2012
One bad-ass Kiwi. One English bicycle. 1280km in 72 hours!
Congratulations to Christine on being the first woman to successfully ride 8 laps of Lake Taupo – five made the attempt at the longest distance this year, and only two finished.
Rode my “English” the whole way! No sore or stiff lower back!! Great bike to ride for a long time!
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Our sister business: Velo B and B
English Cycles is Rob English, 
winner of Best in Show at the 2013 North American Handmade Bike Show. Custom bicycles built in Eugene, Oregon, USA since 2009.
On the saddle for 3 days; the coarse chip-seal roads are anything but flat around Lake Taupo and I can’t imagine 3 days in a row without wind in the Land of the Long White Cloud. WOW! Grand chapeau! To the bad-arse Kiwi and the bad-arse bike.
Daniel,
Estimate about 1350m (4600ft) climbing per loop so ~11,000m (36,800ft) total, so not real flat……learnt to love some of the hills and made peace with all of them in the end. Had a 52-39 on the front and a 12-25 on the back.
I hear you about the wind, we have had out fair share of wind this year, enough to make even me (I go out in almost all wind and weather) spend 2 8 hour training rides on my wind trainer (100+km/hour winds). I have never seen the lake so calm as on that first day. Occassionally there was a couple of hours of breeze, but nothing like the usual wind we get here – you have obviously ridden in NZ!
My English and I were one!
And as for the coarse chip-seal roads that we have in NZ, in my opinion, a steel bike deals with them better than any other bike material.
From sunny Tauranga to sunny Brisbane, since a year ago. I’m looking forward to Rob’s wizardry in March/April, and reacquanting with a steelie.
I was one of the other riders on that ride- had to pull out after 3 laps as I picked up some ash in my eyes (hard to ride when you can see much ) I did it on my bike friday pocket llama – will be back this year for the taupo ride to retry doing the 8 lap ride on the same bike – my bike friday is used all year road for touring on as i live on the road full time by bike its done maybe 50,000 km from when i got it back in 2008 – on a ride note if you ever break a steel frame bike (like i have ) it can be fixed in the midel of nowhere if need be – also having a steel frame helps with the roads in nz better then other non steel bikes? (well from what i can tell from testing out a few bikes any how)