1K subscribers: why are we here? 2024 plans and the worst possible gravel (..cyclocross) route

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Hey gang welcome back to the channel it’s the start of 2024 and we’ve just hit 1,000 subscribers so thank you for subscribing me and honna are out on a ride today and we thought we’d use this as an opportunity to go over who we are in case anyone’s new here and what we’re

Going to be up to in 2024 we’re out on the Cross Bikes today aiming for a little bit more of a gravel ride but it’s the middle of winter in England it’s been super rainy and super windy so it’s definitely going to be a lot of mud let’s go oh

No this is fine Oh my God there’s a lot more to Come we can do a 50k walk W you need Crashed this is almost without doubt the worst thing I’ve ever had to ride a bike on what talking About uhoh so I join you to clean the bike At what point does a puddle become an actual body of water oh there goes the Beet be how’s it going slowly So the plan today was a 53k route out to ethos Bros our favorite vegan cycling Cafe in Essex we’ve been riding for 35 minutes and we’ve done 4 kilometers you might have

To rethink things slightly it’s like ridable surface but because it’s quite steep uphill we are big drugs but let’s keep going and then we’ll start chatting some more but let’s just get out of yeah let get out of this proper B just to make it even more interesting started raining this is

Fine I just find it funny but here gets grumpy I absolutely loving these colors I feel like a princess do I look like one Always all right there we go what Proof He That was cute we together I mean you didn’t want to go to that branch cuz I didn’t want it to rip my K I think I did want you push me off I didn’t push you listening you got two nice lines here and all of a sudden you end up on me

Only br There right It you F well we’re out of the bog I lost uh I’m sub fully submerged my my left my right hand side smell probably a good time to like explain the YouTube channel now we’ be doing it for just over here kind of want to explain why we’re doing it

Oh my God I’m coming for the ride maybe this isn’t the best who obviously we both really like riding bikes why are we making a YouTube channel well I’m I do it professionally as a freelance photographer and I’ve been taking photos pretty much my whole life since I was a teenager but

Nowadays you really you don’t need video but it’s useful to have in your Arsenal I kind of needed to get experience in so we started filming our racing where the focus from us has always been to maintain a relatively high production value because at the end of the day

That’s the goal for us to learn how to make really nice videos walking again so yeah we’re just learning to film really and obviously what do we have the greatest access to is ourselves unfortunately so that’s what you’ve been getting it’s kind of it’s worked well

For me because as I’ve alluded to many times I’m chronically ill and it’s been nice for my sake to like document my return to racing and I have a reason to do that and maybe it’s helpful to other people I have had a couple people reach

Out and tell me that they are suffering similarly if you’re wondering why I’m Ill no I sure am if you’re wondering how in what way I’m Ill I’m not I’m not trying to be mysterious about it I just don’t I don’t want to bore people but

I’m happy talking about it I got like a viral menitis that left me with like post viral syndrome that’s been going for comeing up to 4 years now um it’s basically like long covid but different start of virus uh mine was an infection in the brain so I have formal diagnosis of

Chronic migraine and chronic fatigue so that’s what I’m dealing with but it’s kind of really similar to people suffering from like concussion from long covid and other like chronic fatigue migrain things so I like to think it is quite relatable to a few people even though my specific situation is quite

Unusual yeah it’s it’s it’s good for me to have my to racing on video I’m also uh doing this YouTube thing as a way to hone skills and kind of get better at making videos um cameras OB became a bigger part of my life when I met honor um but when I was

A kid I used to ride mountain bikes and skate like every on so consumed a lot of mountain biking and skate videos so I’ve always been kind of interested in producing video um but that’s really kicked off when I met onor and she started to want to produce video I like

Using you as my subject you are very you’re very camera friendly to you oh God pushed me into the biggest R and he’s always happy to do stupid things on camera for me so I think it’s h like this this a combo we work he has been riding probably his whole life really

Yeah much more than I have give or take lots of different types of bikes started as started with maning bikes when I as a child and mov to fix gears when I grew up a little bit as it were then met honor and really grew up and started

Racing Road and cross and track and everything that you see us doing on the channel I only started riding as an adult I got into Road cycling and then I also got into six gear so that’s where me and Theo our world collided yeah we’ve been through pretty much all

The disciplines now and kind of settled on cyclocross as our favorite I might take that back in a sec oh my God ah That was Cold what you get nothing what was in that glaz ring donut you get s eat just one so our Cafe stop quite slow going so I’m the same of the year so uh I think they’re are they closed now probably we’re also still like 40K away petral station bre it’s

Amazing this is the best s can we route every every ride past no I was like oh we’ll have a lovely qu quiet Cafe stop today and this is what we’ve got cars min is queuing the jet wash so they’re just sitting there running their engine

We just eat the fumes with our vegan sausage roll and wedges pretty good good go more round two for emergencies all right rolling again think we found some gravel um I think it’s just a really bad Road can I can I have the not Poole crater following on from what we was

Saying before before it became too hard to ride a bike or t or anything something I think both of us feel quite strongly about with the YouTube channel as well is wanting to show a more diverse range of people who ride bikes and race bikes in and around London I

Think of course cycling is like really white male heavy um if you’ve been following me for any length of time you’ll know that I’m a strong advocate for women’s cycling uh but it goes beyond that as well and we really like putting cameras on everyone else so you know if you see

Us at a race with a camera and you’re like kind of shy but that would be fun like please come and put your face on camera equally if I put a camera on you and you’re like oh no too shy it’s always fine to tell me also always fine

To go with it and then tell me after that actually you’re not so sure about that that’s always the best option cuz it’s good to give it a go do a carto very lovely dog you are not real hi darling so come and say hello at races

We love chance people and we love showing everyone who races bikes with us so can we come oh it’s R turning so come and say hello and get your get in the videos please I like to put the camera on me because I’m a female but I hate to

Put the camera on me because it’s me I think there is a bit of a hole on the YouTube women’s racing cycling but like the competitive side of it I think there a bit of a gap and I’m not saying we’re the ones to fill it but I would like to help hi

There closer to the of the vient be all thanks it Closer go me oh God can you Go to the the that’s a biggest horse has on that Poo Light easy Help I did It Oh it’s nice boggy now look at this I’m going forward I’m actually like you’re pedding I’m moving this is crazy oh my God look at a Girl you looks spooky doing most of the way through the ride now um but inclusive of the chunk that we skipped out let’s going to talk about the 15K that we skipped out and it’s still going to take two hours longer than we thought we figured it’s getting dark so we

Should also tell you what we do for 2024 professional studio lighting it look good yeah get the sausage roll out you’re standing in the light here we are o got bit muddy muddy hands M that gave me the a so 2024 going to be riding lots more bikes obviously lots of

Csy cross we absolutely love it but Hest health is getting a lot better and we think maybe we can start thinking about going back to racing Road should be quite nice doing some crits we first started racing so we’d like to do a bit more we’ve also didn’t do any last year

We didn’t do any track last year which we both really love so maybe we would touch touch base with that again personally I’m excited to do more mountain biking actually absolutely fell in love with that last year so do some more of that do some bigger races and

Then maybe we’ll do some gravel we’d like to try and find some shorter distance events to do not the 500k through the where like the Appalachia mountains where you’ve got to do it with like one wheel and stuff like that like the really horrible ones 100ish K kings Cup’s a good one we’ve

Looked at and so’s the grow I have to keep the races short cuz that’s how my body likes it unfortunately and yeah for me crits are the big one I really want to bring back crits we both going to start training a bit harder I I obviously have been trying to train

Harder and harder as I go but hopefully might be a bit too ambitious too optimistic to kind of aim for like national series crits the circuit Series in the summer but that would be my dream if I can get back strong enough for them that that would be ideal but if not

Cyclocross 2425 that’s the big one of course but in the meantime a little crits do you want to see crit content what do you want to see on as well I mentioned how we’re doing the YouTube to get better at filming but now I feel

Like I’ve been uh I’ve be missing out on the photography a little bit so it’d be nice to maybe combine the two don’t know if you want to see like uh videos of how we take photos of bike races like tips and tricks for taking photos in cycling

Context maybe we’ll get away with some pro teams again this year and we can do some behind the scenes of behind the scenes of protein themes scenes y the works full time and I am still just kind of winging it trying to get better physically so you know just want to put

All my energy into being creative and riding bikes yeah me too all spare time I have not working 9 to 5 should we eat our donut and then head back I don’t really like the donuts you don’t like fine I’ll eat my donut and then we’ll head back toes are getting quite cold

I’m still on the sausage Ro you want any donut no 10K left I okay made some progress we actually maintained momentum for a bit though what on the road yeah bit through the forest now and then I think most of it we just go downhill back home look at these color layers

It’s like pink cream gold Brown amazing I like wearing brown leggings because you can’t see that I’ve fallen off you can oh God it’s so close to home when you’re going downhill so the mud is so thick stop well Nest descent ever I just can’t

Slow down oh my God speed so much speed so much speed on this desent oh she’s coming woo this is the fastest done done woo oh Yeah Grable wow beautiful festive backdrop all right we’re nearly back thanks for watching the video guys definitely subscribe to the channel for everything we’re going to get up to in 2024 thanks again for everyone who has subscribed already and yeah we’ll see you at a race

Soon please give it a like give it a like okay bye