London to Paris in 24 hours epic cycle Inspiration….. 

OK, you made it to day 2… I’ll set your expectations so you can skip a few if you like and get to the Lycra clad cycling in the rain…

Wed 2 Dec…  I’m going to tell you a bit about how I got the idea (stole the idea) of cycling London to Paris today…

Thurs 3 Dec….   Tomorrow I’ll cover some of my past adventures (short and sweet)…    and then….

Fri 4 Dec…   a bit of prep about buying a fancy new bicycle, choosing gear and packing for the trip (badly)

Sat 5 Dec…    will be the anxious trip to London…

Sun 6 Dec….   We’re off! the train… and we’re off… the bridge… and can we just get started on this cycle trip?!?!

So….  Back to Inspiration…   well I’m not sure if you are like me and are just generally inspired by people who challenge themselves and write blogs about it, or books, or if they get really epic, get some TV coverage?    Let’s take a prime example… 2012 Olympics… I just wanted to become Jessica Ennis!  Not only is she an awesome all round sports queen, she’s also amazingly lovely, accessible and smiley.  Her book ‘Unbelievable’ is a great story of her life, her commitment, the pain and the courage to keep going and keep training.  She is outstanding.   But lets face it – I wasn’t going to compete in 7 athletics disciplines within a year for charity!  So I had another think.

Unbelievable, Jessica Ennis

Now there’s Guy Grieve… this Scottish chap, previously an Edinburgh based journalist, got permission from his wife and young kids to chase a dream of building a log cabin in Alaska and living there through the winter on his own (with pet dog and a team of sled dogs) with no supermarket plan B.  Epic!  But again, wasn’t likely my job would let me take that much time off to probably die alone and cold, in aid of charity… back to the drawing board… !

Call of the Wild, Guy Grieve

Then I was reading “Holding On” by Jo and Rob Gambi.  Imagine your a single man, you see a beautiful girl in a pub.. then you find out she’s into climbing – rock and ice and is not impressed that you do neither!  So, to win her over, you get climbing lessons!  Well Rob Gambi did just that and it could be a nice Disney movie right there but this is real life and although Jo and Rob did get married, they also embarked on a massive challenge (not the marriage).  The decided to climb the highest 7 mountains on earth!  However, true love never runs smooth and sadly Rob also contracted cancer.  Their book is a testament to their endurance of mountain climbing, an endurance of chemo and overcoming it all to achieve their goals (and then some!).  After completing those 7 summits they added on treks to the North and South Poles!  AMAZING!   But yeah… 7 peaks around the world was a bit out my league.  I had only done 7 Scottish Munros and all of those were in summer (so far…  bro : David,  need to speak to you about a bit of ice climbing!).  So that wasn’t happening either!

Holding On, Jo and Rob Gambi

FINALLY… found him!   Inspiration in a ginger beard!  I read a story about Sean Conway swimming from Lands End to John O’Groats and learned that this was actually his 2nd trip from one end of the UK to the other.    I was tempted to try the whole length of the country cycling but thought I was taking that a bit far… – that would be around 10 x further than anything I’d ever cycled before!    However, I read his blog

http://www.seanconway.com/

and came across an entry where he talked about London to Paris in 24 hours!   Bingo lingo clickity click this time I found my sponsorship epic!

Hell and High Water, Sean Conway

Thanks Sean!