Former England footballer and cancer survivor Geoff Thomas has asked me to join a small team which will cycle all twenty-one stages of this year’s Tour de France just one day ahead of the pros. I will be one of only two women in the team that will ride over 2000 miles in 21 days with the aim of raising £1m for Cure Leukaemia. This will be by far the biggest challenge of my life-even many pros have failed to complete Le Tour!

In 2003 Geoff was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukaemia and given three months to live.  Following treatment from Cure Leukaemia co-founder Professor Charlie Craddock, he has been in remission since January 2005. 

To celebrate having been in remission for 10 years we will be riding the entire route of this year's Tour de France raising funds that will boost the life–saving work carried out at the Centre for Clinical Haematology (CCH) at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham (QEHB), where Professor Craddock treated Geoff. 

The money will pay for:

• More specialist research nurses

• Ability to deliver more state of the art therapies clinical trials and blood cancer treatments

• The potential to deliver stem cell transplants as an outpatient procedure

• A dramatically improved patient experience

• The chance of developing cures for a range of blood cancers within the next 30 years

• Consolidate the Queen Elizabeth Hospital’s position as a world-leading centre for the development of new drugs for the treatment of blood cancer

Any donations will really make a difference and are gratefully received!

You can follow my progress on @helengoth @TdF1Dayahead

http://www.beforethetour.com