Training, punctures, puddles and flipping the bird!

It’s been a while since my last post, but that might be down to the fact that all three of us have been extremely busy with work, families and working hard on continuing to raise money for Great Ormond Street Hospital.
We’ve all been getting into the saddle far more regularly, and this week the three of us have made up just under 40 miles of cycling out on evening rides together.
Monday evening was a good 20 mile ride around Thornborough, Nash, Whaddon, Mursley, Swanbourne, Winslow, Great Horwood and back home to Thornborough. The weather was picture perfect and apart from Chris getting a puncture at the top of a steep climb at the top of Whaddon, the ride was a good, steady and quite relaxing one! One thing we have all concluded is that it’s far easier and certainly far more enjoyable getting out as a group rather than by yourself. I think we’ll all be looking to keep the momentum going and continue to push and motivate each other. Last night was a 16 mile ride from Thornborough to Stony Stratford and back taking in other small villages along the way. Chris was at the unfortunate end of luck again, this time there was no puncture, just a lady in a Land Rover that though it would be a good idea to drive through a huge puddle at the side of the road to ensure Chris had a soggy ride home! This didn’t ‘dampen’ our spirits though!
In the last couple of months, Chris has purchased a beautiful new Specialized road bike and you can see the huge improvement it has made. He looks a natural and compared to his old and somewhat heavy old bike, I can’t see him looking back. In terms of getting out there and getting the mileage in, he’s certainly done above and beyond.
Ted has been putting in regular round trips to and from work to Silverstone so is getting at least 60 miles in throughout the week from his commute alone. If you see a bloke hogging the middle of the ring road in the morning in Buckingham, there’s a good chance it’ll be Ted – But don’t beep at him, we’re trying to reduce the amount of ‘sign language’ (flipping the bird) that Ted uses!! As we’ve said before, he seems a natural fit on the bike and he continues to push us all to keep the pace.
Myself, I would love to say I had put in more than I have, but it’s what I do from here on in. I’ve conquered a ride down to Luton to visit my parents and that was a good 33 miles to get there with some seriously challenging climbs. Knowing that 33 miles will be just half of the distance of our regular days in the saddle in Death Valley, it was a serious eye opener and has given me a very determined streak that I don’t intend on losing.
I will be starting to cycle to work and back regularly from now on and hope to build things up where I can start to keep up with the guys on the climbs!
All in all, the three of us will openly admit we’ve had our worries about the challenge and the time we can commit, but I have no doubt that it will be an experience of a lifetime we’ll never forget and the hard work and monotonous miles will be a distant memory st the end of it all.
I moved from Luton about 6 years ago to move to a beautiful part of the country where I could bring my children up in a lovely environment. At the time, it felt I was making a sacrifice to myself as all my friends and family were still living back in Luton and I didn’t know anyone around here, nor care about knowing anyone! 6 years on, i’m looking forward to a challenge of a lifetime with two great friends i’ve met since moving up here, so now that move doesn’t seem such a personal sacrifice anymore!

Trip to Harley Street to meet Greg Whyte!

I think the three of us will all agree that the highlight of this roller-coaster journey so far was our visit to see Greg Whyte on Wednesday. After much communication since February between Neil and Greg, we managed to pen a date in the diary to meet him. There were a few reasons we decided to do this; 1 – We wanted to get some invaluable advice from an Olympian and Sports & Exercise Professor. 2 – He’s trained people of varying sporting and physical ability and condition and managed to get them to swim the British channel, climb Kilimanjaro and run consecutive daily marathons among many other amazing feats! 3 – You don’t pass up the chance to get advice and insight from someone that knows what they’re talking about!

We traveled down on the train from MK station straight into Euston, and because of the tube strikes, we took the pleasant walk to Harley Street where the Sports Clinic was based. At this stage, we still weren’t too sure what we were going to get from the meeting, or if he would have much time for us, or even whether the bloke was going to be very receptive to what we were doing. Luckily, I can honestly say he was one of the nicest blokes you’ll ever meet (it must be down to his upbringing in Luton like mine!) and he took an hour and a half of his busy schedule to show us around the clinic and go for a coffee with him.
After taking us around the clinic and showing us the amazing things they do there http://www.chhp.com/, we went for that coffee and sat down with him to tell him what we were training for. He gave us some fantastic advice, tips on how to raise more money for the charity and is even going to send us all a training plan for us to focus on up until November. On top of this, he has offered us the opportunity to go down to the clinic again for tests on some of their world leading and technologically advanced machinery to help devise plans and statistics for each of us. We’ll also be taking him up on his offer of meeting at the clinic and cycling around Hyde Park with him one afternoon! We left the meeting really pleased we had all taken the day off to meet him, and Greg has agreed to keep in contact with us up until the cycle ride in November. He has also offered to help in any way he can with our fundraising efforts!
All in all, it was a fantastic day where we got invaluable advice, from a world leading sports and exercise Professor at Harley Street, but more than that, he was just like one of us…..only fitter, in a tailored suit and fitness guru to the stars!

He’s worked with Gary Barlow, David Walliams, Eddie Izzard, John Bishop, Alan Shearer, Robbie Savage and Davina McCall to name but a few, now he can add Neil Gothard, Ted Barber and Chris Cox to that illustrious list!

Sponsors and more training

Chris has managed to do a lot of work contacting local companies and informing them of our charity cycle and asking for their help.  One of the companies to get back in contact was a cycling equipment and clothing company called Shutt Velo Rapide.  We were kindly invited to their head office to discuss what we were doing in more depth to see if there was something that they could do to help us.  We met Peter, who owns the company and to our surprise and delight, they have agreed to sponsor us with our clothing apparel for the cycle challenge.  We are so pleased and thankful for their support.

Training has moved up a gear, Ted is cycling to work and back several times a week which is a 20 mile round trip and Chris and Neil have been out on routes of 25 miles plus regularly as of late.  Things are going in the right direction!

Please have a look at their website for more details on their clothing and equipment http://www.shuttvr.com/

PUB QUIZ!

Thank you so much to everyone who came to the Pub Quiz – we raised around £300 which is amazing. It was a fantastic night and we really appreciate the support for such a good cause.

Here is a link to our just giving page if anyone would like to donate or sponsor a brick on our wall, and also some info on the GOSH charity.

http://www.justgiving.com/DeathValleyCycle2014

https://www.facebook.com/GOSHCharityChallengeEvents

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Our next event is the Black Tie Ball, in Buckingham Town Hall, on Friday 11th July! Email us to reserve tickets/more information.

Anyone wishing to give a raffle prize please contact us.

SILENT SUNDAY 20.4.2014

Thanks GOSH

We need to take note of this!

Donations, publicity & Ted’s back!

Donations, publicity & Ted’s back!
Working in a senior role for a Formula 1 team pre-season meant that Ted was in Spain and Bahrain for a month, and upon his return, we were glad to have him out training with us, although he was probably just happy to be back home to see his wife and two young boys. Seeing Neil and Chris clad head to toe in lycra wouldn’t have been what he was looking forward to on the plane journey back I’d imagine! Whilst Ted was away, the wives had built up a head of steam and had got together and come up with some fantastic ideas to raise money for GOSH. All of our charity events will be advertised on the blog and Facebook pages (the links are at the bottom of the blog here too). We have had some local press interest too so when the local paper decided to do an article, the wives jumped at the chance and with much trepidation, the husbands did as they were told! There we were, all lined up, cycling down the road, handle-bar to handle-bar, lycra, helmets, cheesy smiles and much laughter as the local photographer tried in vain to get the ‘action shot’. After all of that, it was a static photo that was taken of us all arm in arm on a Tuesday lunchtime on Charlotte and Ted’s driveway that made the final cut! Quite an experience! We’ve even been tweeting celebrities to help spread the word of what we’re doing on social media. To our surprise, we’ve had re-tweets from the likes of Jeff Stelling and most incredibly, Rubens Barrichello!
When we set up our Just Giving page, we had put in a rather adventurous target of £15,000 to raise, but you have to push yourselves and we agreed that if we could get anywhere near that target, we’d be very happy indeed. What we have been totally blown away with is people’s generosity. We still have just under 7 months to go and we have managed to raise over £1000 in total already from individuals and businesses.

http://www.facebook.com/DeathValleyCycle2014

http://www.justgiving.com/DeathValleyCycle2014

BRICKS FOR SALE!

HOW DOES YOUR GARDEN GROW

not my garden unfortunately, but a beautiful show of daffodils I saw on my last training session – spring has sprung

See more How does your garden grow at http://www.mammasauras.co.uk