Ride Across Britain 2022 - Raising Funds for....

The Olmalaika Trust in Kenya and The Rowcroft Hospice in Torquay

Both organizations have touched my heart in different ways;

The Olmalaika Trust houses and protects young Kenyan girls who have experienced trauma such as child marriage, female genital mutilation and abandonment. The girls are provided a home and an education in a warm, nurturing and loving environment and works to enable them to be educated, respected, productive and valued young women. Having girls of my own in our privileged Canadian society it is important to me to reach out and help this great cause in any way possible.

The Rowcroft Hospice helped my mum in so many ways during the last days of my dad's life and for that I will be ever grateful. Taking care of all the practical issues and allowing my parents to spend those last precious moments together means the world to me.

So what am I doing to help raise this money - riding my bike for 1,600km and climbing 16,000m elevation along the way - in 9 days, sounds crazy!

Yes! Crazy is what it is and incredibly scary at the same time, and motivating and scary again!

What have I signed up for - well it’s an event called “Ride Across Britain” and it starts at the very southern western tip of England, Lands End and ends at the most north eastern tip of mainland Scotland, John O Groats - LEJOG is what the cyclists in the know call it.

“Why?” is the next most obvious question that immediately springs to mind and that is a very good question. I think it’s a personality defect of some kind as I seem to have a need to take on challenges that are large and scary. Moving to Canada on my own was one pretty big one, doing a marathon as my first and only running event (I suck at running), a half Ironman as my only foray in the triathlon world (I suck at swimming and running). I did then smartly realize that biking was really the only activity I was OK at and really enjoyed so then moved on to the next set of challenges being a 7 day mountain bike stage race (the TransRockies) and a 100 mile mountain bike race (The Cascade Cream Puff). The great thing is I survived them all, finished them all (which at times did not seem possible), didn’t podium in any of them (yes I am not fast) and for sure wanted to quit them all at various stages during the suffering. But I don’t remember that, what I remember now is that I have a sense of accomplishment and pride that I did them! LEJOG seems like a suitable challenge for a Brit who has now lived in western Canada for almost as long as I lived in England, something nostalgic and patriotic about riding from one end of my birth country to the other.

So what on earth possessed me to sign up for RAB, as Ride Across Britain is affectionately known. Someone I knew well from university days did it in 2017 and I happened on his posts on Facebook and the seed was planted. The mind games kind of went like this, for 2 years;

“That’s such a cool achievement, I would love to do that”

“ Are you crazy you haven’t barely ridden a road bike for 30 mins let alone multiple days in the last 10 years”

“But I did a 100 mile mountain bike race and a 7 day stage race”

“Yes, back in 2004, 15 years ago!”

“Really it seems like yesterday - I do mountain bike a bit these days, not as much as I used to but a bit”

“But 9 days, 1,600km - thats over 100 miles a day AND it’s not flat in fact 16,000m is a f**k of a lot of climbing, actually that’s almost twice the height of Everest - that is scary”

“But what an achievement”

“You work full time, are a single parent to 2 young kids, where on earth are you going to find the time to dedicate to this”

“But I am not getting any younger and certainly not exactly getting any fitter these days and this would be such a great achievement, I think I can do it if I train - I’m just going to sign up”

“100 miles a day for 9 days - wait what you signed up and paid the $$$ - I guess we’re doing this - you can do it, you can do it - what could possibly go wrong!!!!”

That was December 2019. What could possibly go wrong!!!

So here we are - almost 3 years later in August 2022 and I am just about to get to the start line - its been a ride already!!!! In very short form here’s what’s happened in the last 2.5 years.

All in all I have trained religiously approx. 5 times a week indoor riding on Zwift, outdoor road riding and mountain biking, cross country skiing - I have ridden appox. 20,000km and climbed 260,000m since Dec 2019 - I hope it's enough!