Setting off on Le Tour - Brest, Brittany

Setting off on Le Tour - Brest, Brittany
Ian (Left) and Matt (Right)

Hello and a very warm welcome to our blog.

We are two amateur cyclists who have decided to follow in the footsteps of our cycling heroes and ride the complete 2008 Tour de France route. This year the most famous cycle race in the world covers 3500km (2200 miles) over 3 weeks in July and takes in some of the highest mountain passes in the Pyrenees and Alps.

We will start two days after the professionals on 7th July in Brest, Brittany and ride the whole thing stage-for-stage, road-for-road, day-for-day as the pros will be. This will result in us arriving in Paris on 29th July, having averaged 100 miles per day. Please click this link to see what lies ahead of us:
http://www.letour.fr/2008/TDF/COURSE/us/le_tour_2008.html
Our aim is to complete the whole route and this means that we will not be racing round but riding at a sensible, sustainable pace. As a result, we expect to be in the saddle for 12 hours on some days.

Friends and family will be driving a support vehicle but we will not have the benefit of masseurs, soigneurs, chefs and team doctors that the pros have. And there will be no Testosterone, EPO or illegal blood doping going on in our Tour!

We hope to raise as much money as possible for two very worthwhile charities: Ian is raising money for CLIC Sargent and Matt for MacMillan Cancer Support. Please dig deep and support these charities via our justgiving pages on the right. Alternatively, please email us with your name, contact details and the amount you would like to donate and we will contact you after we complete our tour.

At this time, a friend of Ian's, Robbie Stuart, is fighting Leukaemia and is a supporter of CLIC Sargent's work. A link to his blog can be found here. Best wishes go to Robbie who is currently recovering from a bone marrow transplant.

Please tell you friends about our blog and what we are doing, and please send us words of encouragement and support.
We will update you with our training and we will be keeping a diary on here as we ride the event in July.

Best wishes

Ian and Matt

Saturday 8 March 2008

Nasty horrible West of Scotland weather!

Now as you may have realised through some of my earlier blogs, I cycle mainly because I throughly enjoy it and because of the sense of achievement you feel at the end of a ride.

Today, however was not one of those days! I set out to do about 100 miles heading due South on one of the routes I did a few weeks ago down towards Sanquhar. However, after 2 hours of trudging into what must have been a 30mph gusting headwind, in the pouring rain, I'd had enough. It just wasn't enjoyable and I wasn't getting out of the ride what I needed - so I turned and headed back.

Now I still managed over 45 miles in just under 3 hours so it wasn't a total right off - but I don't feel great at having packed - but there's no way I could have coped at being nearly blown off the road for another 4 hours.

Still, there's always tomorrow - the BBC is forecasting snow (but then their weather forecasts are always rubbish anyway). They got the wind direction wrong by an impressive 90 degrees this morning.

I hope Ian has managed better!