London Edinburgh London Preparation and such

Bikes have been interesting to me since I was a kid. My godfather (a very complicated figure in my life, very strongly influenced my sense of manliness and rebeliousness, but at the same time I realise that he is was an alcoholic womaniser with whom I share little in way of values) gifted me my first bike when I turned 5 years old or such. I could not ride it, since it was a 5 speed 24” that had no security wheels. So I rode my elder sister’s backpedal blue bicycle for a while until I gathered the courage and skill to ride the 5spd. Ever since I’ve been fascinated by the locomotion that bicycles provide.

When I started riding bicycles a bit more seriously I bought a book about long distance bicycling and read it from beginning to end with great interest. I was interested in bike touring at the time, and the book was more about audax nd randonneuring but it was great to know about new horizons and disciplines. As I read through it I found about the Paris-Brest-Paris from the audax club parissiene. The authors wrote about it with respect, it’s not the longest or hardest challenge they talk about but it`s the pinnacle of audax as a discipline.

As a mexican rider, it took a while before I had the agency to plan for such an event - and when I did eventually had it in me to plan for such a challenge, I found that the PBP’s four year schedule became really hard for me. I planned seriously for the last two iterations (2015, 2019, 2023) but could not make it work. During 2024 I realised if I wanted to do this, I could not wait much longer - 2027 seemed far away and reading about similar events I found about the LEL. Having studied in a british high school I have a great affinity for british culture and since the next event was in 2025 the dates matched well. I prebooked a ticket and was selected to participate. (!!!)

Thus started my journey towards the this mammoth event, 1500kms and 128 hrs long. I have almost completely rebuilt my bike for this challeng. Changing almost everything on it. One of the most relevant upgrade have been the wheels. I built a custom wheelset based on Velocity Dyad rims with double butted DT Swiss spokes and SON nabendynamo hub in the front. Buying these parts was such a big expense that was too scared to let these wheels be built by somebody else, so I ventured into building them. My first wheelset.

Previousy I have rebuilt many things, including a V8 engine, many electronic devices and computers, and larger parts of bicycles. But the stakes in this rebuild were higher, I would need to ride on these wheels for a very important event. It was mentally tough to build the motivation to do this. I felt pressured and ended up sitting on the parts for months before building up the courage to do it.

First I had to slowly gather my parts. The first part and pillar of everything was the SON nabendynamo hub. I had dreamed of this hub before, but had never commited to spending 450 pounds on it! After that, a simple tried and true 105 rear hub (at this point in 2024 it was getting difficult to find non disc brake shimano hubs). Then the rims, velocity dyad - rims strong and aerodynamic. Finally, spokes. I wanted a strong bug light wheel and decided on DT Swiss competition double butted spokes with brass nipples finishing it all off with velox cotton rim tape. Getting to the correct spoke lenght was not that easy, I had to measure and research quite a bit.

Finally I had to book time with my mentor in bike engineering, Jorge Lujan. He is a legendary bike engineer from mexico city, he cut his teeth with the bici-gato, his brother was once of Lance Armstrong’s team mechanic and as far as road bikes go, he has more knowledge than anyone else I know.

He agreed to let me use his shoppe and tools to build my wheels, for which I am really grateful. The day came and I left home with all of my parts, moment of truth approaching steadily. There are many really small details about how to build a wheel properly. It was not easy and I required constant guidance.

  • The valve stem needs an uninterrupted space so you can properly get to it and air the tires
  • Spoke holes are drilled at a slight offset, if a hole is leaning left, the spoke should go to the right side of the hub.
  • Spokes threads need to be greased beforehand.
  • Weaving the spoke (a threed cross pattern in my case) needs to be done systematically and carefully.
  • The most critical part of the spoke weaving is the beginning, defer to the Bicycle Wheel book by Jobst Brandt for details.
  • Once everything is loosely set up, oil the bases of each nipple.
  • Slowly tighten all of the nipples until the threads are not visible.
  • Tighten the nipples slowly alternative between the right and left side of the wheel, truing laterally and radially as you finish each stage.
  • Front wheels (non disc ones at least) are symmetrical in forces, so you can tighten each side equally as you go.
  • Check for spoke tension as you go along, front wheels should be 70-90 kgf and rear wheels should be 90-120 kgf.
  • If you have good quality parts and you have been systematic in your approach, you should not need to true much.
  • Rear wheels are usually asymmetrical, which means you need to tighten the sprocket side about 50% more, this introduces weird forces that make truing laterally and radially more critical and harder.

After this, voila. You’ve got a true, handbuilt wheel! And now, I’ll need to test it… Stay tuned for some heave testing as I ride this wheel extensively, and probably provide an in depth review after my LEL attempt.