Myself, Darren, Gareth and Chris are doing this charity bike ride to help raise money for AAIR (the asthma charity).

The event is a celebration of the French mountains, made famous by the Tour de France. We will start riding from Troyes, after making our own way there in Chris' trusty Volvo, on 17th September 2015. On that first day (of 3), we will warm up by riding 180 miles through the beautiful Champagne region, then through the vineyards to Macon, before riding onwards towards the Rhone Alps. 

If that hasn't already finished us off, on day 2 we will ride 175 miles through the beautiful (but horribly hilly) 1,000 Lake district, before finishing at Vercors, taking in 3,600 metres of mountain ascents on the way. That's a lot of ascents (roughly 2.2 miles up from sea level, over a climbing distance of 36 miles at an average gradient of 6%).

On day 3, the survivors from day 2 (if any) will ride through the French Alpes, climbing both Chamrousse (21 km of uphill and peaking at an altitude of 1,750m ) and Alpe D’Huez (13 km of uphill and peaking at an altitude of  1,850m), dragging ourselves around the 21 hairpin corners of the ascent to this iconic climb, which earlier this year (as it often does) decided the winner of the Tour De France (Chris Froome).

In order to make the climb of Alpe D’Huez achievable, without the need for 'sticky bottles', tow ropes, hidden electric motors, performance enhancing drugs or blood transplants, the organisers have kindly reduced the last day to just 80 miles (mostly uphill!), so that hopefully we will have a little energy left to celebrate at the end.

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