Mizen to Malin Charity Cycle Setup

mikesavo2003

Hi
Looking to organise charity cycle from Mizen to Malin for summer next year. No exp of doin anything like this so all advice appreciated. There is 3 or 4 of us keen to do cycle so thought we may aswell do it for charity while we r at it. Thinkin small event with 1 support car hopin to do it over 3/4 days. All advice from route to charity set up greatly appreciated thanks

Rita1

mikesavo2003 wrote: »

Hi
Looking to organise charity cycle from Mizen to Malin for summer next year. No exp of doin anything like this so all advice appreciated. There is 3 or 4 of us keen to do cycle so thought we may aswell do it for charity while we r at it. Thinkin small event with 1 support car hopin to do it over 3/4 days. All advice from route to charity set up greatly appreciated thanks

Three of us did it last year with one support vehicle over 5 days.
Day 1: mizen to killarney
Day 2: killarney to lehinch
Day 3: lehinch to claremorris
Day 4: claremorris to donegal town
Day 5: donegal town to malin head

Avg 84 miles per day.

Snapper79

Myself and a friend of mine did it this year with just 1 support car. We went from Malin to Mizen. Make sure you start getting in the milage from January on so that you'll enjoy it. I only started cycling 3 years ago, I quit the smokes last January to make sure I could do it. Was well worth it.

wilfitz

What kind of weekly mileage would you need to be doing in training for this?

Snapper79

I started in January doing about 30-40kms 3 times a week and built that up to 70k with a 100k here and there the odd Saturday had a turbo trainer also at home for the odd day for an hour or so.

spoke2cun

I would love to do something like this too. But I might try something like around the coast of Donegal cycle to see how that would go first. I would do this for charity. I'll see if I can talk some of my mates into it.

mikesavo2003

Cheers for all d advice guys have been cycling roughly 2 years now similarly after givin up d fags. Normally get out 5 days of d week averaging bout 200k per week winter will be a bit lower but will do runnin and gym instead so hoping fitness should be grand. Did ne one do it for charity? If so how was it received was sponsorship / donations easy to get?

borntobike

I done it twice last year. For that group you could do four days -
Mizen - Tralee
Tralee- Galway
Galway - Mullaghmore or Bundoran
Mullaghmore - Malin

I would advise using B&B's rather than Hotels - they are flexible for an early breakfast and there is no noise at night when you need sleep. Also use garages for food as they have indoor facilities if it is cold or wet plus toilets.

Training - Start doing 100km runs from end of Feb and more importantly use Easter and bank holidays to do either 2 or 3 back to back days. That is more important as you need the feel of doing big days and recovering quickly. I would suggest spinning classes midweek over the winter

essdee

I did this with two other cyclists and a driver this summer. Here are some suggestions based on our experience.

Try and get a driver who will carry your bags, spare tyres, pumps etc. Three cyclists is probably enough so that you can all fit in one car (with the bikes loaded on the back). If you go beyond three, you'll probably end up renting a van or needing a second driver, which all adds to costs.

Plan your route. Use several maps to do this. A good starting point is the "Cycling" directions option on Google Maps but it's good to double check it with other maps. We made a list of the towns and roads we would go through. This saved us time during the day because none of us were familiar in advance with the route we chose. We went Mizen to Mallow (Day 1), Mallow to Birr (Day 2), Birr to Sligo (Day 3) and Sligo to Malin (Day 4). We chose this route because our charity was based in the Tipperary area and we wanted to drive through the county. The route was a good one for cycling. The toughest climb (surprisingly to me) was from Tipperary town to Nenagh. The most dangerous part was from Boyle to Sligo; the traffic on this road is heavy, much of the road has no hard shoulder and it was raining. In general we tried to avoid N roads, unless there is a good hard shoulder present, but this isn't always possible; besides it depends on the kind of cycling you like to do. Originally we had planned to do this over five days (with Letterkenny to Malin being the final stage). However, when we arrived in Letterkenny we decided to keep going and it was worth it for the lie-in the following morning.

We chose to stay in hotels (at our own expense). This is because at the end of a long cycle it's good to have some creature comforts - especially a swimming pool to unwind. Of the four hotels only one was awkward about putting the bikes in the rooms. That hotel did, however, provide an alternative storage option but eventually they also relented and agreed that we could keep the bikes in the rooms. However, for the night before the trip we found that there are no real hotels near Mizen Head itself, except for the small and rather over-priced Barleycove Hotel. The best B&B we found was in nearby Goleen called the Whitehouse (and owned by a US woman). Whatever, B&B you choose in this area, it needs to be booked early because they don't have many rooms - the four of us ended up staying in three different B&Bs the first night.

It seems as if you won't have a problem in terms of fitness if you're currently doing around 200 km a week. All three of us trained in different ways. One was methodical and was a strong cyclist (no coincidence!), and did several cycles a week of around 100 km+ in the two months leading up to the cycle on top of a general high level of fitness. In the six weeks before the cycle I built up from 60 km (about 6 cycles) to 80 km (about 5 cycles) to 100km (about 4 cycles) to a maximum of 130km (3 cycles) and then eased off in the two weeks before the cycle, finishing up with two cycles of around 40 km. The third group member had fewer opportunities to train, despite having been a strong cyclist 20 years ago. He probably did about a dozen cycles of 40-50 km. All three of us managed to do the full cycle with relatively little difficulty.

For the charity end of things. You just need to contact a representative of the chosen charity and tell them your plans. We did it for two charities which complicated matters a bit. We set up a page on mycharity.ie (http://www.mycharity.ie/event/mizen2malin4parkinsonswheelchair/) and also gave sponsorship cards to anyone we knew who would agree to take them. The charities themselves also raised some money based on the event. We went for two Tipperary-based charities, which made it more difficult looking for funding outside that area. Nevertheless, people were very generous. If there's just three of you, it's more difficult to collect money when you go through towns as you don't have the same visible impact of a group of 12 or more going through the town. Besides, you will need to get a permit to collect in towns. It is good to send articles to local media (press and radio) to inform them of the event in advance). Again the charity may have someone who will do this.

We got cycling tops printed for the event - tops bought in LIDL and printed by INTO Sport in Castlecomer Co.Kilkenny. This was useful for photos etc. We also got a sign printed for the car - we never used that as intended (to warn cars to take it easy because we were nearby) but it too was useful for photos.

We set up a facebook page so that people could monitor the trip from day to day: https://www.facebook.com/pedalmizen.tomalin?fref=ts. This also provided us with a useful record of the trip.

We mentioned on www.boards.ie that we would be happy for cyclists to join us for part of the route and one Boards cycling forum member joined us from Mallow to Tipperary town.

After the event we had a presentation afternoon where we gave the money to charity and showed an AV of the event to wrap it all up.

There's a bit of work in organising it but it's well worth it. Let me know if you have any other questions.

Cee-Jay-Cee

Myself and a gang are doing this next september too, the provisional route is
Mizen to Tralee (152km)
Tralee to Gort (162km)
Gort to Claremorris (85km)
Claremorris to Donegal Town (140km)
Donegal town to Malin (120km)

The only section I'm a little concerned about is Molls gap, hills wouldnt be my forte and I believe Molls is a tough enough climb for approx 9km. Anyone any further insight into it or how difficult it is?

Raam

CJC999 wrote: »

Myself and a gang are doing this next september too, the provisional route is
Mizen to Tralee (152km)
Tralee to Gort (162km)
Gort to Claremorris (85km)
Claremorris to Donegal Town (140km)
Donegal town to Malin (120km)

The only section I'm a little concerned about is Molls gap, hills wouldnt be my forte and I believe Molls is a tough enough climb for approx 9km. Anyone any further insight into it or how difficult it is?

What route are you taking in to Tralee? I can see quite a few bumps before and after Molls Gap.

Molls Gap is not so steep, but it drags on a bit.

Cee-Jay-Cee

Raam wrote: »

What route are you taking in to Tralee? I can see quite a few bumps before and after Molls Gap.

Molls Gap is not so steep, but it drags on a bit.

Havent a clue but will find out. We were given the towns and distances and thats about it...the finer details have yet to be ironed out.

Raam

CJC999 wrote: »

Havent a clue but will find out. We were given the towns and distances and thats about it...the finer details have yet to be ironed out.

For what its worth, when I did M2M I went to Charleveille the first day, then on to Tuam on day 2. Day 3 we went to Bundoran then on day 4 it was up to Malin.

youtheman

CJC999 wrote: »

The only section I'm a little concerned about is Molls gap, hills wouldnt be my forte and I believe Molls is a tough enough climb for approx 9km. Anyone any further insight into it or how difficult it is?

Molls Gap is much easier going South to North, as you will be going, (i.e Kenmare to Killarney) compared to the other way.

You also have a similar climb before Molls from Glengarrif to Kenmare, aka The Healy Pass, but these are the only two 'real' climbs you'll have on the whole trip (bar the 100 m short climb up to Malin Head itself)