London to Paris Cycle Challenge - June 2007

I'm starting to repeat myself here, but I'm really becoming tired of the British weather. I was all geared up for a 30 mile ride on Sunday. The route was all planned, my energy bars and drink were prepared, my hydration pack was filled and my cycling gear was laid out neatly on the bed ready for changing into.

The weather was reasonable, cloudy and windy, but the rain was holding off. Until, about 10 minutes before I was due to set off - downpour. Grrrr.

I then came across the following fellow Blogger via the Discovery Travel forum website - http://www.poyda.co.uk/cycling/pedal2paris/index.htm.

It's a good read, especially for anyone thinking of doing something as ludicrous as riding a pushbike 300 miles in four days... However, it also brought home the enormity of the challenge and started to make we worry about the level of training I'm doing... This brings me to the purpose of this particular post. The wisdom of our loved ones. On hearing my concerns and whinges about how hard it will be to cycle 95 miles on the first day, then get up and do another 80 miles each day for the next three, my wife turns to me and says "but if you train too well, the actual event wouldn't be the challenge it's supposed to be would it?". Brilliant... I guess the hint is in the title - Cycle Challenge. Now I feel much better because I've come to terms with the fact that the whole point of the ride is that I practically kill myself getting to Paris, that I have to drag my feeble cadence wearied legs down the Champs Elysees and under the Eiffel Tower, that I have to get sores in places I didn't know you could get sores, that I have to push myself beyond my current limits of fitness and stamina. Because if I don't suffer any pain on the journey, what's the point? I'm trying to help those little kids in Africa who have to walk 18kms to school everyday, who have to make their own cooking pots and fetch their own water from a filthy river before they can start cooking the handfuls of maize they've grown... I want them to have a chance at a future that contains just a little less suffering, and for that I'm prepared to put myself through the mill for a measley four days...

Now I feel better about not being able to train so much. I'm off for a bacon butty and a lie down ;-)