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Dad was with us for 58 years and was married to mum for 35 years, he passed away nearly 10 years ago in May 2005.  He was a wonderful father and grandfather and is missed everyday. He really was a nice and kind man.  He hung on long enough to see his 2nd grandchild born.  As most of you will remember he passed away 1 day after Joe was born, a bitter sweet time for us all.   Dad was a great inspiration to me in many ways and his work at GE (Jack Welch's General Electric) in the 80's inspired me to a management career and global travel.   Dad was a big sports fan, football (United) and golf in particular and encouraged me to take personal challenges and stretch the boundaries safely.  

(see a gallery of pictures on the site below.)

So, I want to bring some attention to the anniversary and shout from the roof tops in the way I know best. On Bank holiday weekend May 23rd-25th 2015, I'm going to undertake a personal challenge to cycle at least 250 miles in 2.5 days.  I haven't cycled for more than 1 day before and I have never cycled more than 100 miles. So I want to double that and some more.   Whatever the weather conditions, whatever the obstacles presented en route, I commit to doing 250 miles in 2.5 days.   This is possibly completely uncharted territory.  Not that it's the most glamorous of routes,  I'm not aware of anyone who will have cycled between St Albans and Bury with the route im doing.  I have not done any of this route before,  I will be cycling a combination of A & B roads and you wont be surprised to hear that I will give the M1 and M6 a miss despite the more direct route.  The basic route:  St Albans to Rutland, Rutland to Buxton, Buxton to Bury.  

This is more than a cycle ride, in order to achieve this in 2 .5 days I have to weigh up all the pitfalls and banana skins.  I won't have any support vehicles and will be carrying my own necessary resources.  My mobile phone battery will probably run out.   I will need to deal with any unexpected mechanicals and route challenges. Just one wrong turn can knock you a half hour off schedule so a few of those over 250 miles of A and B roads can cause a very long day quite quickly.  Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh.

So please join me on this journey.   As well as being an opportunity for us to remember a wonderful person who graced our planet, hopefully this will do a little to remind us all of the great work going on in Cancer Research today.  I'm fascinated by the pioneering work being done at the University College Hospital, London for Cancer research. This was recently shown in the documentary on Channel 4 as part of 'Standup to Cancer' initiative. A staggering 1 in 3 of us will be diagnosed with cancer in our lifetime.   We need to support the active trials going on today so they can carry on making the rapid breakthroughs. 

Take a minute to cut and paste this into your browser to see this 1 min inspiring clip. 

http://www.channel4.com/programmes/curing-cancer/videos/all/curing-cancer-clip-1

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/1014/161014-curing-cancer

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/cancer

This is not only a personal challenge, but I would love to raise some money to help fight Cancer in doing so.   Please contribute a little something if you can, to give me that extra determination to finish in 2.5 days.  Target to raise at least 250 pounds.