The final countdown

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Forgive me bloggers for I have sinned, it's been 4 weeks since my last post, hopefully you'll be sympathetic as the reason for this has been because I've been mostly concentrating on taking my training seriously & to be honest, have been too darn exhausted to type! My logic being that getting fit & making sure I am strong & ready for the ride has had to take priority over everything else.

Before I rabbit on about what I've been up to - a lot of you have told me you've had problems finding the online giving link, you can click on the Community Music In Action logo on the right of this page, but I've discovered if you're reading this on a mobile or a tablet, these links don't appear. So in case you want to sponsor me & I'd be so very grateful if you did, you can do so by clicking the link at the top of this post.

It does what it says on the shirt.......hopefully!

So, it's been a busy 4 weeks bike-wise, and training is/was paying off. My weekends have been spent chewing up the miles either with the bike club, sometimes alone & sometimes with my cycling buddies Cath, Andy & Bill who have been brilliant & entertaining company (thanks guys). As you know I had started part-commuting to work (15 miles round trip) twice a week & I've also added in riding the 35 miles trip home  once a week. I did the ride home a couple of times when I was training for London to Paris & it used to take me about 3 and a half hours, it's been a massive encouragement & motivation that I can now do this same journey in around 2 hours and 40 mins - great to see how far I've come & improved in a year. I think there are quite a few factors that have helped, a lighter bike, a lighter me, better weather & perhaps a strong headwind - but I'd like to think I'm a better cyclist than I was twelve months ago too.

So here I find myself, with only 3 days to go & with all the miles I'd put in, you'd think I'd be feeling confident & raring to go, but actually I'm feeling almost as scared & apprehensive as I was before Paris. The route is flatter & should be less challenging, but the distance is further than I've ever done, the weather is looking changeable & I'm nervous about meeting new people & not being as fit as everyone else in the group, I'm racked with guilt & regret that I haven't done enough training, I'm wishing I'd paid more attention to my diet & I'm definitely wishing we hadn't ordered that extra bottle of red with dinner last night! The feeling that there really is now nothing more I can do, should be a satisfying & exciting one, but it's not, I'm tormenting myself with every what if question I can think of & I should have learnt from last year, that planning to have a weekend of doing nothing in preparation, mentally really isn't what I need.

But then I think back to actually why I'm doing this, to raise money for Community Music in Action, which I help to run. Last year, with the help of your donations over 150 vulnerable people in my local community benefited from the different music projects we ran. We set up an extra curricular choir for students with Special Educational Needs at Glebe School in West Wickham, we ran a singing project for people with Alzheimers at the White Gables Day Care Centre in Bromley & we ran a Rap & Lyric Writing Project with Riverside Specialist School for children with Autism to name but a few.

On Wednesday we met to talk about the forthcoming projects we are planning over the summer. It's going to be a busy one with two projects already confirmed & more in the pipeline.

The first one is in conjunction with Whizz-Kidz. There are an estimated 70,000 disabled children and young people in the UK waiting for a wheelchair that fits their young lives. That’s where Whizz-Kidz come in, they provide disabled children with the essential wheelchairs and other mobility equipment they need to lead fun and active childhoods. But, giving a disabled child a wheelchair is just the start of their journey with Whizz-Kidz, all around the country disabled children and young people are meeting and making friends at their growing network of local Ambassador clubs. Which is where Community Music In Action are getting involved, we will be running a music workshop at their Ambassador Club in West Wickham, an experienced music leader will help children with lyric writing & group singing, helping the children develop communication skills & giving them tools to express themselves creatively, but don't take my word for it - have a look at the video to see what goes on & what the kids get from taking part............

The second project we are planning is with Bromley Young Carers, a local support service for young people who are aged between 4-18 years and who live in a family where someone is affected by a long term illness, disability, mental health issue, alcohol or substance misuse or HIV. We will be running a musical summer camp for them in the school summer holidays & are currently scoping their requirements & finalising plans & ideas. We really hope to be able to provide these young people some much needed respite from their very difficult day to day lives.

We're also in talks with Demelza Hospice & Carer's Bromley for projects later on in the year. There are so many people in our community that can benefit from our help & we want to do more. With your donations, that will become a reality - so please do give whatever you can, however, small - I promise we'll put it to good use.

If you go down to the woods today......(well the Forest actually)

So last week I posted on the eve of the New Forest Super Series Sportive, full of anticipation for a long day in the saddle. As a cyclist, you become obsessed with the weather & even though I'd checked the bbc weather website umpteen times for the start point Brockenhurst & it did say heavy rains & 16mph winds....for some reason I was in denial! Even when the organiser's posted this on their facebook page.......

We drove down to the New Forest in glorious rising sunshine, thank goodness, they had got it wrong after all - phew! Waiting at the start with my two wingmen Andy & Andy, I was excited to be getting out into the beautiful countryside. On the New Forest official website there is a whole section dedicated to the joys of cycling in the area, it promotes safe & gentle cycle routes where you can experience open heathland & sheltered woods. It's especially magical in the spring when you ride through bluebells, taking in the stunning landscape & historic villages with the wonders of newly born baby animals at the roadside - it sounded idyllic & so welcoming!

This is what I had envisaged

When the rain started about 45 minutes into the ride, the drops of rain glistened off the bluebells & it felt quite cool & refreshing on my face this was going to be a great day........when the wind began to drive that rain into my very core for the rest of the 4.34 hours I was riding through this magical place, I can confirm there is no splendour to the open heathland - just a hideous feeling of vast exposure & the sheltered woodland, does not provide sufficient shelter!

And as for the lovely local welcome, well it would seem that some of the residents of the New Forest don't take too kindly to those cyclists that the website invites to enjoy "their" National Park. In Boldre, one of those picturesque historic villages the website so lovingly promotes, tacks had been thrown onto the road & along the whole route approx 1,000 route signs were vandalised in an attempt to sabotage the ride. Not being with the elite riders at the front does have it's advantages as we weren't directly affected, but many people suffered punctures & falls as a result. Luckily no one was seriously hurt, but they could have been. I guess if I'm being really open minded, I can understand that 1,800 cyclists coming through your village might be a bit inconvenient, but 1 day out of 365? Surely we can all live & let live? It never ceases to amaze me how small minded, thoughtless & malicious some people can be, potentially putting people's lives at risk to make a point.

This was the reality!

Anyway, despite the weather & the drama & the fact that a week on, every item of clothing I wore that day is still drying out, I did actually enjoy myself. Due to the weather we switched to the shorter 50 mile route & I was pleasantly surprised at how quickly it went & how strong I still felt 10 miles before the end.......except the 50 mile route, wasn't really 50 miles, it was 58.9 miles to be precise. Let's just say, there wasn't much chat going on for the last 8.9 miles - it's so weird how psychology plays such a big part in long rides. At mile 49 I was riding strong, thinking I could have easily managed the 80 miler, then realising I had another 8 miles left, my legs turned to lead, the less said about my bum the better & the wind & rain definitely got harder & colder, infact at one point I was pedalling down hill, trying to get some speed up so it would be over as quickly as possible & the rain actually felt like pins in my face - nice!

But I can confirm, a pint of peroni (and I must confess a marlborough light) have never tasted as good or as well earnt as the one I had when we got to the nice dry & warm pub as close to the finish line as we could find!

So, I'm feeling encouraged, that I can complete 50 miles comfortably (not 58.9 though!), but my ride is 330, on 3 consecutive days, so there's still some way to go - in actual terms & metaphorically.......so training continues! I read somewhere this weekend, that as long as you can do 75% of your event mileage comfortably before the event, you don't have anything to worry about - so that's 247 miles I have to get comfortable with, this week I've clocked up 132 miles which I was quite pleased with - so that's just over half of what my "comfortable" mileage should be, in twice as many days..........hmmmmmmmmmmm!!! I think I've still got a long way to go - quite literally.

Thank you to all of you who have so generously sponsored me - apologies that I haven't thanked you personally yet, I am having a problem with our online giving provider CAF - they will only give me information regarding our donations on a monthly basis, so if you do hit the donate button, please drop me an email or a text (publicity@cmia.org.uk or 07793119064) & let me know, then I can thank you properly.

Thanks again for all your support, this week I'll post about the project we've just finished & hopefully some exciting news about some forthcoming projects we are planning for later this year - if I can fit it all whilst trying to gt to the magic 247!

Gx

Can't keep putting it off because of the weather - this week the training starts!

This time in 7 weeks, if things are going according to plan, I should be spending the evening in Amsterdam, probably not enjoying the same delights of the city that most tourists do, but I will be pleased as punch to be there, as it means I will be 155 miles into my challenge & nearly (only nearly?!) half way there. I've never been to Amsterdam, but it's supposed to be the bicycling capital of Europe........as well as other things! I guess I'll be keeping away from the other things & will be tucked up in bed early, stressing about my next day ahead, the biggest day of the whole trip on the bike, 113 miles to Turnhout.

Anyway, with all this in mind, intense (well intense for me) training has kicked in this week. According to my plan, this week I should be doing a 50 miler, a 45 miler & 90 minutes of "another activity" as well as daily 3 x 15 sets of core exercises programme, sit ups, lunges, calf stretches etc. I've been struggling to fit long rides into my weekends lately, so I figured that I had to change tactics. So this week I started part-commuting to work, 15 miles round trip & whilst it takes a bit of organisation & forward planning, I've quite enjoyed it & it turns out I'm not alone, there's actually been a professional research study published in Portland US in Feb 2012, proving that people who commute by bike arrive to work the happiest & here's the diagram to prove it!


Each day brings it's own challenges & incidents, but so far so good....well I'm still here to tell the tale & have made it to my desk, showered changed and on time every day....just about!

It's amazing how much you think about in those 30 mins & how much more awake I am when I arrive at work, I guess that's down to the adrenalin that's been coursing through my veins as I negotiate the rush hour traffic. Probably the funniest / worst thing that happened was on Wednesday morning in the rain, I was cycling through the industrial estate about 10 mins away from the office, when a lorry pulled out of the road to my right and turned into the lane by the side of me, I decided to hold back as I wasn't sure how far it would swing out when it straightened up. It must have just set off from wherever it had been parked overnight because as it turned, the rainfall from the night before, that had evidently been collecting on it's tarpaulin roof completely emptied itself over yours truly, who, as I said was courteously holding back behind - it was like someone had literally thrown a gallon of water over me! If I wasn't awake before that, I certainly was then!

The daily part commute is not only helping me get strength in my legs & hours in the saddle, it's also saving me money, with the money I save on the tram to Croydon & the lower fare to Gatwick instead of Crawley, I am saving £6 a day. If I do this every working day until D-Day, that's a saving of £228. That's cash I would have been using on commuting, so it's money I technically won't miss - so I've decided, the way I will motivate myself to continue with this, is that every day I commute, I am going to donate the money I would have spent to CMIA. This week I've done 3 days, so that's £18 which I've just donated by hitting the CMIA logo at the top of this page. 

I find the donations really do help to motivate me & make me train harder, as I know I can't let anyone down - so if you're enjoying the blog, believe in the cause or would just like to support me, however small, please do find it in your heart to donate - your generosity will really make a difference to the lives of vulnerable people in my local community who we are setting up music projects for throughout the year. On average, it costs about £600 to fund a project, so if I hit my target, that will be an extra project we'll be able to run this year, thanks to your support.

So anyway, it's Friday night, it's 9.30pm and as much as I'd love to continue to bore you with annecdotes of my week's endeavours (and there are many) I can't, as I have to be in bed shortly. Tomorrow the alarm is set for 4.30am for a 5.30am pick up, as I will be travelling down to the New Forest to ride the Wiggle Super Series New Forest Sportive. An organised ride, where you are given a time chip & you race against your own personal timings, At the end you are given a bronze, silver or gold medal depending on the time you have completed it in. I did my first Sportive last August in the pouring rain around Ashdown Forest & came second to last, although I did have mechanical issues half way round, since then I've been a more respectable middle of the pack - but I'm still only a bronze medal holder. Tomorrow I've entered the Epic course, which is 80 miles, I'll be happy with another bronze medal, as tomorrow the acheivement for me will be the mileage.

Blimey!.........I still have to pinch myself sometimes that this is really me these days! 

It's been a long time, I know, I'm sorry!

I cannot believe the last time I updated this blog was the 3rd June, the weekend BEFORE I was due to ride to Paris. I'm so sorry I didn't return to this and give you all "closure". To be honest, I wasn't exactly sure if anyone was reading it & it's only over time I've found out that quite a few of you were - so thank you.

So Paris eh? Well I only bloody did it! And what an experience, little did I know that when I finished that journey at the Eiffel Tower, after 4 of the most incredible, moving, challenging & enjoyable days of my life, that the journey wasn't actually over........in fact it was just beginning.

If you want a little snippet of what the whole adventure was like, we actually had a film crew with us on the trip who were filming a promotional video for the organiser's Skyline, absolutely brilliant for me, as I get to keep these two films and relive the experience every time I'm feeling a little low (although it didn't feel like it at the time, as whenever you seemed to be having a tough moment, there was never a camera too far away, but luckily they seem to have edited the worst out - I guess they want people to sign up in the future!).

In fact I still cry every time I watch it, I don't think I'll ever not. If you do spare a minute to watch either of the videos, don't blink or you'll miss me, but I can assure you I do appear in both.....fleetingly.

Long Version

Short Version

So what have I been doing since Paris? Well it's been quite an adventure, but mainly I've been continuing my transformation from this:-

 to this:-

Since returning from Paris, I bought a new carbon road bike, Stan, he's a Boardman - get it?! and have kept up the riding. I've ridden 4 x Sportives of approx 50 miles each in various parts of the country - all very eventful for many different reasons but most of them self inflicted. I revisited London to Brighton, this time taking on Ditchling Beacon and learnt that you should NEVER attempt such a feat on a MASSIVE hangover. I've had some highs on rides & some lows, but all of them have been experienced with some great friends.

Probably the highlight of my year was when I was lucky enough to be invited on a VIP trip to Paris, to experience the final weekend of the Tour de France, when I accepted this invitation, back in January, 6 months before my ride, I had no idea what an historical moment I would be witnessing from such close quarters. As guests of Accor Hotels, who are sponsors of the Europcar Team, we were given inside access to all aspects of the Tour, we met pro cyclists, current & historical & even joined the Europcar riders at their after Tour party, and despite what you might think, I can confirm that after 3 weeks of what is classed as the hardest test of physical ability in the world, these guys can still party hard. I raised a  toast with King of the Mountains, Thomas Thomas Voeckler and cut some shapes with Pierre Roland (8th place overall in the tour), with his team tie tied around his forehead, which will be something that I will never forget!

The wierdest thing about all of this, is I wouldn't have known who any of these people were 6 months ago & now it was like a dream come true!

But the absolute highlight (apart from the obvs one of Wiggo & Cav making history of course) was being led out by Bernard Hinault (google him) and getting to ride 3 laps of a jam packed Champs Elysee circuit before the pro cyclists arrived later in the afternoon, with the crowds actually cheering me. I can actually say I passed the finish line BEFORE Wiggo & Cavendish! It's the only time the organisers have ever opened the route to amateurs before the pro's come through, it was such a big thing, that we actually made it onto the front of L'Equipe, France's largest national sports newspaper!

My biggest fear after all of this, was that this cycling thing was going to become a fad, a passing phase & that life would once again get in the way & I would go back to my old ways. I needed another challenge to keep me focused so, not one for doing things by halves, I signed myself up for another multi-day event. This time I'm training for the 3 Cities Challenge. Setting off from Stratford in London, we go to Amsterdam, then onto Bruge. It's 330 miles in total and I have 3 days to do it in, yes you can do the maths, an average of over 100 miles per day -eeeek! I figured the terrain would be flatter, so hard could it be? At that point I hadn't read up on the classic Belgium routes & their infamous cross winds, but that would be ok wouldn't it? This time I signed up in August, so I had nearly a year to train. It was going to be a breeze (pardon the pun).

So why is it then, that I find myself with only 7 weeks before pedal off (that's for you Vibecke) and once again am cacking myself.......damn you horrible British winter!

Once again I'm raising money for Community Music In Action (CMIA) and over the next few weeks, I'll show you some of the great stuff we've managed to achieve over the last year. I'm funding the costs of the trip, so any money you feel generous enough to donate, will go 100% to the charity, funding music projects for vulnerable groups in my local community.

Oh and did I say, I'm also entered into Boris's RideLondon100 in August, raising money for Children's Cancer Charity CLIC Sargent......but more on that another time!

Please do click on the page links at the top of the page for more info on the charity's I've chosen to support & if you can find it in your hearts to hit either donate button, I'd be eternally grateful.

You are past the point of no return

Last Sunday I did my longest ever solo training ride, 67 miles on a very beautiful but hot Sunday afternoon. As I was nearing the end, it suddenly dawned on me that I was exactly that, past the point of no return. There was no amount of training that I could cram in now that would help me with what I'm going to do in now, just 3 days time. Some of you may know, that I used to be Product Manager for Florida at Virgin Holidays, and therefore have spent some time experiencing the thrills and spills of the rollercoasters in Orlando's theme parks (stick with me on this one). My favourite ride of all time is the Incredible Hulk at Universal's Islands of Adventure. The roller coaster is unique because it features a launch lift hill as opposed to conventional chain lifts, this means the train accelerates to 40 mph in approximately 2 seconds before speeding through several inversions (sorry geeky rollercoaster freak moment). At the start of the ride, the car stops and alarm bells start to ring, whilst a loud recorded voice screams in your ear "malfunction, malfunction, you are past the point of no return" & the mixed feeling of excitement, fear & anticipation is a heady combination that is difficult to beat, or experience in any other life situation, it only happens for a split second normally........and I've now been feeling exactly that for a week now - it's exhausting!

My emotions this week have certainly been a rollercoaster, with alternate feelings each morning, sometimes sheer excitement and cannotwait-ness, to naseastiousness and what have I done-ness!!! I'm not concerned about the per day mileage, I'm pretty sure having got several 50-60 milers under my belt, I can do that. Over the last few weeks, I've been racking up 120+ miles per week. But whether I can do those sort of miles on 4 consecutive days......well as I said at the beginning of this post - there's not much I can do about it now if I can't. I'm reliably told by great friends who've done this sort of thing and have offered advice and encouragement, that I will find a reserve from somewhere that I didn't know I had and the dynamics and support of the group I'm riding with will make all the difference.

So I'm sorry I haven't posted in a while, but if I'm honest, almost every waking hour has been consumed with preparing for Wednesday, whether that has been buying last minute kit, attending a nutrition talk at the bike club, liaising with the printers constantly to make sure my cycling jerseys were going to arrive with all my logos printed on them, thanking all my fantastically generous sponsors, obsessively checking the 10 day weather forecast (at present sunny with showers), or whiling away the hours overthinking every eventuality!


Talking of sponsors, I have now raised a MASSIVE £2,510, as you will have read previously, my fabulous employers Virgin Holidays have paid my full costs, which means that every penny that you have all pledged goes 100% to Community Music in Action. I've also had some very generous contributions from some of the suppliers I work with, so thank you so very much to the Dubai Department of Tourism & Commerce and to Centara Hotels and Resorts. 

I'll be wearing your logos proudly on my cycling jersey all the way to the Eiffel Tower. Working in travel, it's wonderful to think I really do have "world-wide" support, with donations coming in from as far flung places as Florida, USA, Mexico, Barbados, Thailand & Dubai - wow! Get me! Thanks so much to all of you, your generosity has been over-whelming. 


When I first set out, I wanted to raise a minimum of £2,000, which would fund 2 x extra projects a year. With the support of Virgin Holidays & your generous donations, we can now increase that to 3 extra projects - if I can increase my total to £2,700, we could do 4 - doubling what the charity targets to do in a year, which would be phenomenal. If you haven't done so already, if you could find it in your hearts to hit the donate button on the right hand side of this page - or pledge your money via email or text and I'll collect afterwards, even if it's just a £1, every single penny will go direct to the charity.


Unfortunately circumstances outside of my control meant I couldn't get to see our current project last week as I'd planned. We have funded a professional rapper, Myles Dhillon, to go into the Riverside School, a specialist school for children with autism to work with their sixth formers on a story-telling project. My visit has been re-scheduled for their final session on the 2nd July, so I'll still get to see directly where all your donations are going, and I'll definitely still report back. We also have a project confirmed with the Alzheimers Society to run through the summer and are currently in the process of recruiting the right Project Leader for this. It's so rewarding to see the benefits that I have got from singing with the choir, being passed on to people less fortunate than myself.


So anyway, here I am with only 3 days to wait. When I originally signed up for this and noticed our set off date was the day after the Diamond Jubilee double bank holiday, I thought, how great, I'll have 4 days off work before the ride to prepare and chill....of course the reality hit this week, the WHOLE nation are out partying whilst I'm sat in doors, trying to avoid injury and alcohol - I actually couldn't have picked a worse weekend to want to do nothing! Oh well, ho hum, in years to come, when I'm asked what I was doing on the weekend of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, I certainly won't forget it!

As you know, it was me joining the choir that was the catalyst to me starting on this journey, this term we are working on some new songs, and there is one that is so apt for what I'm doing, in fact I sometimes (especially on some of the more challenging hills) find myself singing it whilst I'm cycling along, so I thought I'd leave you with it........as this is definitely all I can hope for now............and if you think of me at any point from Wednesday onwards, envisage me on a bike, cycling along country lanes, singing this at the top of my voice!   

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2jVCyTrB4ws

http://www.communitymusicinaction.org.uk/