100% of donations go to the Charity BLISS

A cycling coach told me that this challenge is equivalent to running 5 marathons in 5 days so my initial thought was 'that's 5 times harder than my last challenge....brilliant where do I sign up?' Since starting cycling last April and more seriously since October it has become clear that running fitness does not translate to cycling fitness...fact!! This has been confirmed to me by many many experienced cyclists and my own painful experiences!

However since realising the true size of this challenge I have dedicated a huge amount of time, money & sweat in increasing my cycling fitness levels in the shortest amount of time feasible. Looking at my Garmin Training diary I have been putting in between 9 and 15 hours training a week since and including my honeymoon in December. This is the most and the hardest I've ever trained in my life.

Most people who get this far and read this will know that I do enjoy a challenge having done a couple of marathons and climbed Mount Kilimanjaro in the past. Whilst doing this, friends, family and work colleagues have often supported the associated nominated charity which I am always hugely grateful for as The MS Society and Joanna Brown Trust are close to my heart.

Based on this history of generosity I decided this year that I needed to take the challenge to the next level in order for people to believe that it is worthy of supporting independant of the chosen charity. Me and 4 other people at my work (Boehringer Ingelheim UK) have come up with this challenge which is essentially to ride from our Head Office in the UK to our main HQ in Germany based in Ingelheim near Frankfurt. This works out at 500miles so we naively felt that this was do-able in 5 days...which it is for a very good and very fit experienced cyclist. If we're honest none of us at the time were and certainly are not now!

Since then the 5 of us set up a team of 18 cyclists and 6 support crew to take on this challenge and to raise money for BLISS. Our team target is £36,000...!! The challenge itself, the training and the fundraising are 3 huge tasks of equal difficulty in my mind.

BLISS is our nominated work charity so as such I do not have a deep personal connection with them. However, having met with them and researched into them it is clear that they do some fantastic work for parents of babies born too soon, too small, too sick. I had no idea that one in every 9 babies in the UK is born either premature or sick. This is equates to 80,000 a year being admitted to special care every 6 minutes.

BLISS is there to provide support and advice over the phone, through their network of local consellors and locally based groups.

Bliss fund innovative research and practice helping to raise standards so that the best possible care can be provided. They are also driving a number of new projects designed to provide direct support and care to babies, their parents and families in hospitals and within their local community.

 

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - I raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

So please dig deep and donate now.