For those of you that dont know, I do a bit of cycling now and again Also some of you may or may not have noticed that I have shed quite a bit of additional weight over the past 6 months Well, this has all been leading up to a series of events that I will be riding and hoping to raise a bit of money for the risual Foundation in the process.. So, 2 parts to this then Why am I raising money and what are these events?

So, the raising money part first. I appreciated that with everything going on in the world at the minute that people dont have loads of cash knocking about to throw at sponsorship and the like so originally this was never the aim of these events, however during the last 6 months on of the long standing members of our cycling club has been diagnosed with prostate cancer which isnt good news, so with this I wanted to try and show some support for our friend and the battle he is fighting. However rather than just fundraising for a single cause and limiting the positive impact this could have, I have chosen to raise sponsorship for the risual Foundation who can then distribute this to several worthy causes including of course Men United which is the charity that supports the battle on Prostate Cancer. Anything you can give, no matter how small will be hugely appreciated.

Now the events

Well, the first one up is this Sunday 19th June, and it is known as the Dragon Ride which is located in South Wales in the region of the Brecon Beacons, so a pretty flat ride . I will be taking on the Gran Fondo route, which is 213Km in length and has around 11,500ft of climbing involved. This route takes on some pretty challenging climbs along the way and will be a real challenge.

The route profile looks like this:

Next up on Sunday 10th July will be the main thing that I have been training for this year which with be the Etape Du Tour 2022. For those of you that dont know this is a yearly event that replicates a particular stage of the Tour De France of that year where a gang of amateur cyclists like me get to ride the route a few days before the pros do. This years event takes on the route that will be done on Stage 12 which is a mountain stage in the Alps finishing at the summit of Alpe DHuez. The route itself is 166km in length with about 16,000ft of climbing, which involved scaling 3 mountain passes in the shape of Col de Galibier, Col de la Croix de Fer and of course Ale DHuez. I will have some risual rider company on this ride in the form of our very own Paul Platt

The route profile for this one looks like this:

The finally the series comes to an end with a group ride with other from my local cycling club in support of our friend mentioned earlier. This ride will be for us to ride from Manchester to the Velodrome located in the Olympic Park London in a single day. This sees us taking on a route of 350km in a single day which will take us around 14 or 15 hours. The planned route is shown below: