13 of us, mostly desk jockeys over 40 [and most close to 50], cycled the Hadrians wall cycle path [NCR72] from coast 2 coast for the Cancer research Charity. So far raised £3k for charity
We all needed to be back in Birmingham for sunday night to be in work on monday, so we did 80 of the 100 miles on the saturday, leaving only 20 miles to do on sunday. and we had to take all our kit with us.
The route is commonly ridden from the Carlisle side to the Newcastle side as that would have the prevailing NW winds helping you.........so being lazy b8stard that is what we agreed to do. As most of you will have noticed, Saturday was a bit windy, and up in the borders it was gusting to 25 / 30mph. Not a problem if it was in the normal NW direction, but our luck was not to be good, so it was a 20mph North easterly wind that we had to work with.
On the flat we would normally ride at 15 to 17mph during training, with the wind we were fighting to do 11mph, so from the exposed start point by the Solway coast, we already looked like we were in for a tough day.
Add to that one of the crew having all the punctures [7 puntures on one bike, zero punctures on 12 other bikes!], and finding out after 80 miles of cycling on the official route, that out 2 mile detour to the overnight stop at a bunk house was going to require us to cycle up from close to sea level up to 400ft.
Safe to say it was one of the toughest physical challanges I have done, but in hidsight it was very rewarding.
here is the team photo....at the start at Bowness on Solway at 8am Saturday, then at the pub stop at 40 miles
[already 1.5hrs behind schedule and only 1/2 way!] then in bottom one we are at Tynemouth.I am the tall skinny "S" on the right in the top 2 pics, and the left of the final one.
and if any of you want to sponser me here is a link to the donation site.
http://www.justgiving.com/BownesstoTynemouth
For me it is a good cause as the big C visited our house 7 years ago, and although we had the all clear now, I hope it will make a difference to the probability of others hearing those heart sinking words from their Doc.
Any one think of any good anagrams we could try based on those t shirts, we struggled to think of any thing rude or funny
