In early 2020, a couple of friends asked me to join their team for a nice, flat 30-mile charity bike ride across London. Unfortunately that got cancelled due to Covid.

Then in early 2021, another request: "Anyone want to join us cycling London to Brighton? Click on the link below and select the 9am start time". So I did, and now I'm part of a team ("Team Mavericks", set up by my barber).

After signing up, I read the blurb and realised that I may have, to quote Winnie the Pooh, "Not Thought This Through".

I hadn't clocked when I paid my entry fee that it was a) off-road and b) 97 kilometers.

Now, I'm cool with the off-road bit. The scenery's more interesting and there’s less chance of ending up inspecting the underside of an articulated lorry.

The 97km bit though? Well... that's not so cool. That’s only half a mile shorter than the furthest ride I’ve ever done in a day. But that one was on tarmac, and on a road bike. In fact, on a very expensive, borrowed, lightweight carbon racing bike. And it nearly killed me. (For the non-scientific among you, we have muscles in the top and bottom halves of our legs - let's keep it simple and not worry what they're called. By the time I finished, all that was still working was the top half of my right leg. I was broken and literally running on one cylinder out of four.)

So, for me, this is not a walk in the park, but it has given me an incentive to try to get in slightly better shape. And I'm part of a team, and we all know that it's not the done thing to back out of a team unless you have a Very Good Reason. And I can't think of one.

The other incentive to complete this ride is to remember my father who died suddenly and unexpectedly of something very akin to a heart-attack 18 years ago at the age of 63. If this ride was 3 days earlier, it would be taking place on his 82nd birthday. I’ll raise a glass of champagne to him at the finish, assuming I get there.

Dad was very much into the theatre, reading and poetry, but I’m also told that in his younger days - we're talking in the 1960's I think - he would cycle from his home in Birchington-on-Sea into London to watch a play and then cycle home. I presume he stayed overnight and cycled home the next day as I looked this journey up on Google maps today and found that it's 85 miles each way. Bikes in those days weren't what they are now either but then again, as an Army Commando, he was kind of fit!

I'm also a great believer that if you're going to put yourself on the line, it's worth setting a fund-raising target that's both useful and challenging. To be frank, it annoys me when I read of people who have done amazing things and then raised £50. That seems like a wasted opportunity.

So I've set my target at £1000 since that  basically equates to £10 for each kilometre of the ride. To be honest though that seems a bit on the light side, so I’m hoping as most of my friends are rowers and have a fascination with the phrase “2k”, we might be able to “keep walking” and hit the magic £2k.

What would be amazing is if friends could try to do their own 97k on the same day, be that on a real ride, Zwift, or an erg (either individually or in teams), ask their friends to sponsor them and feed those funds into my page. How cool would that be? There must be a Zwift route for London-to-Brighton. Maybe we could get a competition running with whole virtual teams joining in. Anyone want to organise that? Message me - we could set up a Facebook page and take it from there.

Anyhow, thanks for visiting my page. The BHF has helped halve the number of people dying from heart and circulatory disease in the UK but sadly hundreds of people still lose their lives due to these conditions every day. It's only thanks to support from people like you that the BHF can create new treatments and discover new cures.

I’m going to suggest this 'giving' scale, although donations of any value will be welcomed:

£1 - you have no money spare but at least you can now say you sponsored me

£3 - come on, most of you spend that on a coffee!

£5 – you downloaded one of my photos recently and ‘forgot’ to donate to another charity

£10 – basically sponsors me for 1 km of my 'target'

£62 – if you've been working from home this year you’ve been able to claim this back in tax (*if you haven't already, look this up online, and you can double it to £124 if you're a higher rate taxpayer)

£97 – you’re now sponsoring me £1/kilometre

Thank you,

Al