Ramblings of a reluctant cyclist - Richard

Well here we go my first ever blog or is it post? I’m not too sure, anyway here we go.  Thank you to Barry for making encouraging us to blog.  I’m sure it gets easier but Barry you set the bar really high! 

Why?

This is the question we have all asked ourselves and for some strange reason the question I keep getting asked by the team!  In the absence of doubt this was not my idea! (I think?) 

So why?  Mid-life crisis? Again like the others I’m not sure,  I have the most beautiful wife (note to self, tell her more!) and fast cars scare the hell out of me.   I guess I’ve always just done daft things!  As a child I loved a challenge and would normally be the one trying to prove the childish what ifs.  This got me into plenty of trouble! Like trying to cycle across Acton Park Lake on my bike when it was frozen from the top of the hill, to trying to cycle through Acton Park Lake when it wasn’t frozen from the top of the hill! (Both serious fails BTW).   I guess I was always out to prove something!  Amateur psychologists tell me it’s a father thing!

 I recently found a TV show on sky called ‘Myth Busters’, had they offered this as an option at my careers meeting I may have worked considerably harder at school!

Ok, so this is the serious bit but please feel free to skip.

I remember reading a quote from  the Dalai Lama which really made me think, I’m not religious, worry little of the future and try not to live in the past so I surprised myself when after reading it I stopped and took a deep breath .  Nothing unusual really, I read lots of stuff and rarely remember any individual breaths but this one was different it was the moment I realised I needed to really live!

“What surprises the Dalai Lama? Man. Because he sacrifices health in order to make money.  Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his heath and then he is so anxious about the future he does not enjoy the present; the result being he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die and then dies having never really lived”

As a child I watched my sister battle and then finally succumb to cancer, her struggle and desire to live has always stayed with me.   So if I’m honest, I kind of owe it to her to live a good life and more importantly a full life and if as part of that I can give something back then great.  After all I think it was Michael Josephson who said ‘when our time comes what will really matter is not what we got but what we gave’

The challenges

Sometime ago Lee and I decided to as part of our ‘payback’ we would take on a new fund raising challenge every 2 years or so (yes it takes that long to recover) 6 years ago we cycled Hadrian’s Wall in a weekend carrying camping kit and equipment,  2 years later we cycled around Wales in 8 days covering almost 500 miles and this year we decided it was time for the ‘big one’ LEJOG.  You will notice I use ‘we’ at this point confirming that there was at least one other person involved in decision to do this challenge.

So here we are 2 months to go until the start, official fund raising is under way and training is going well.  I suspect Barry will be pushing us to ‘blog’ again very soon until then please see below my new cycling gear!