Cycle Show 2011 & The Bike Biz Awards

The Cycleshow had a new venue of the Birmingham NEC this year and I had agreed to spend a few days there with cycleaid.

Left working Wednesday morning and started off on the not so direct train journey from Norwich to Birmingham via London. Arrived in the afternoon and located the Travelodge which would be my home for the next 2 nights nights.

The evening before the show was the Bike biz awards 2011 held @ the very LARGE Hilton on the NEC grounds, I met Caroline and Lee @ the bar and we had a quick drink and headed off into the awards which had a great all you could eat buffet which as you could imagine was popular with the cyclist's . Then we watched the 13 awards handed out ranging from best bike workshop to website.

There were more drinks after but we had an early night as early start for the show.

The Trade day thursday was pretty busy and got to chat the a lot of interesting people and some cyclist called Geraint Thomas opened the proceedings.

We had the Tri-uk stand opposite us and they had a indoor triathlon planned for the Firday moring so thought I would give that a go.

So after the show we had a very nice meal in the Ibis hotel at the airport and then I headed over to the gym @ the Hilton for a quick pre tri work out.

Friday was the first public day and was surprisingly busy for a very hot work day and we had a great interest in our prize draw in which we were giving away 2 free EXPOSURE Joystick lights.

11am came and was time for me to get changed and enter the indoor triathlon which was a 500m row on a water filled rower and 4k on the bike and 800m run. Now I thought this sounded easy....well up on the rower got to about 300m and fell off the back on the seat bashing my bum on the frame and had to be helped back onto the machine but still won that leg and then onto the bike and won that leg now onto the treadmill which wasnt the usual electrically assisted type but a bit like a hamster so the faster you went the faster it went! suffered big time on that and a tri athlete beat me by a few seconds, so 2nd place out of the 5 competitors not bad for a MTB rider (very good photos to follow). After a sit down for quite a while I composed myself........ and back to work. Later in the day had a ride on the test track on a 29er carbon from a new Swish start up company www.zaboo29er.co.uk which was very nice and the 1km test track which was quite technical for a small piece of woods on the NEC grounds.

After the show finished headed back home on a even less direct train back to Norwich via Peterborough. The show is still on over Sunday with Caroline and Susan on the stand and the prize draw will still be open.