The Training

Most of my training has been commuting every day to South Kensington from near Biggin Hill in Kent, usually with LEJOG team mate John. It's a 40-mile round trip and takes in some beautiful parts of London ...

Westminster: that's me that is ...

 ... and a few not so beautiful ones:

Lewisham

Long summer days this year meant early morning rides around Kent before heading into London. Some days covered over 80 miles with the return journey in the evening, meaning my wife has hardly spoken to me for months but has had to sit through the evening news with me next to her, my head tilted back, mouth open, dribbling and snoring over Huw Edwards, if you know what I mean.

My favourite weekend ride is Brighton and back which I have only done twice so it might just be a novelty. It's 106 miles and takes in the dreaded Ditchling Beacon. If you live south of the Thames and ride a bike, you are not officially a cyclist until you have done the Beacon. Leaving home at 6 on a Sunday morning gets me to a greasy spoon under the colonnade on the beachfront for breakfast with the drunks heading home from the night before. I look a bit of a plank sitting next to them in my lycra so it's a good incentive to get back on the bike and come home.

Cyclists are obsessive, worse than runners. Some are inclined to do mad things. I am glad that I have just about prepared myself for LEJOG without doing anything silly like riding 114 miles to Southend and back at midnight in the pouring rain like John.

The Challenge

We will be cycling LEJOG in 11 and a bit days covering almost exactly 1000 miles. We set off from Land's End at 9.30am on Tuesday 24 September and arrive in John O'Groats by late morning on Saturday 05 October. The last day is the 'bit day' - a quick 30-miler to give us time to have our photos taken by the End-to-End sign, throw our bikes in the sea, and jump on the coach back to Inverness for a chafing and blisters party. Here is the route:

Click to enlarge

From Day 3, we cross the Severn Bridge and head up the Welsh border, passing through Wigan and Preston, skirting the edge of the Lake District, and then heading up the west side of Scotland. We follow the fault line towards Inverness before heading directly north to the coast.

We are riding with a tour organised by DiscoverAdventure. 21 riders are currently entered. DiscoverAdventure look after everything except the cycling so we don't have to carry our luggage or arrange accommodation. Most nights we will do B&Bs, with the odd Travelodge thrown in and even a youth hostel. Sharing a dormitory all night with 20 other smelly snoring and farting cyclists and then having to fill the coal buckets in the morning is not my idea of heaven but I am hoping I will be too tired to care.

Most days we will cover between 80 and 100 miles. Day 2 is only 70 miles, but that is the dreaded Dartmoor day, a day with no flat surfaces, only nasty inclines and hair-raising descents with wild horses and sheep blocking the roads at the bottom, not to mention man-eating big cats lurking on the verges (or was that the Beast of Bodmin?). It will be the hardest ride I have ever done. Well, that is what everyone keeps telling me, from the organisers to colleagues whose relatives have done LEJOG, and even passers-by in the street. I can see what they mean:

Day 2 Profile: click to enlarge

We drove Day 2 a few weeks ago on the way back from Cornwall and I was exhausted in the car. The one thing that is helping distract me from Day-2-Fear is enjoying team mate John's sheer terror of it.

Part of the endurance test will be writing this blog each day. It will be my LEJOG Blog Slog. An even greater test of endurance will be yours, reading it. I thought I'd say it before you did.