As I write this, I am less than three weeks away from catching my flight to France to start the Tour de Force. The panic is starting to set in.
It has been over a month since my last post and a lot has happened. Mostly, it was moving house that got in the way, but there is also some other stuff to catch up on.
Eight hours at The Galleries, Bristol
On 20 May, I spent eight hours on my bike attached to a turbo trainer at The Galleries shopping centre in Bristol. When I was arranging it, I briefly considered doing two consecutive days there - I am glad I decided against that!
To anybody who doesn't know what a turbo trainer is, it attaches to the back wheel so that you can pedal your bike without moving (much like an exercise bike). I borrowed one from somebody at work (thank you Richard!) and set it up like this:
Most importantly, though, I managed to raise £164.20. It felt like I had to work really hard to earn that, but in a way that took on its own importance. Nobody had to donate any money, so the fact that anybody at all did felt pretty amazing. The people who donated often appeared to be those who would have had good reasons for not donating. It was also nice to hear people's good wishes and stories of their own fundraising experiences. I will definitely be more generous when I see other people in similar situations.
Thank you to everybody who came in to say hello and wish me luck. I am really grateful to those people from work who came along, but special thanks go to my family, my girlfriend and to my friend Rob for coming along to hold buckets and tell passers by what on earth I was doing.
Tour of Wessex
A few months ago, I signed up for the Tour of Wessex, which takes place each year over the spring bank holiday weekend. I signed up the whole event, which would see me ride around 320 miles over three days. Part of the appeal of this was the opportunity to go on back to back long rides and get my legs used to it a bit. It was also going to be another opportunity to ride with some of the other Tour de Force riders that I will be riding with in France next month. Unfortunately, after a hectic couple of months, I decided that I would benefit from a day off, so decided to skip the Saturday.
In fairly typical fashion, I woke up on the Saturday (my rest day) and decided to go for a ride anyway - just not such a stupidly long one! I cycled from Bristol to Bath and, once there, decided to try to find the Two Tunnels route. I eventually found it and quite enjoyed what is both a cycle route and an art installation.
Stage 2 of the Tour of Wessex took place on the Sunday. The route went from Huish Episcopi to Corfe Castle and back in a loop. Unfortunately, the battery of my Garmin isn't good enough to last the whole day - it made it as far as 174.6km (108.5 miles), plus about 5km (3 miles) that I didn't record because I forgot to unpause my Garmin at some point. I think the ride was around 189km (117 miles). It was a pretty exhausting ride, but made much easier by Gareth who spent the day "riding slowly" with me to keep me company.
Just to cement my novice status, I was booked in to get a sports massage after that ride to prepare me for the next day. I was introduced to the masseur, who asked what I would like done. "Er, I don't really know", I said. "Well, what hurts the most?" "My shoulders, I think". Good skills, Tom. To be fair, though, it did really help my shoulders!
On the bank holiday Monday, I decided I wanted to get home early as I was moving house a few days later, so I rode the shorter (102km / 64 mile) route. This was still quite challenging, with some steep hills, but it meant that I finished at lunchtime. As I sat there chatting, about 45 minutes after finishing, David Kinjah (Chris Froome's mentor and training partner in Kenya) crossed the finish line. Wow, I thought, I finished before him! Then it dawned on me that he had almost certainly just finished the 104 mile route - although he probably (hopefully) had a head start.
Fundraising
This summer I will be riding 670km (430 miles) in four days as I tackle four stages of the Tour de France. More information is available here.
All of this hard work is to raise money for the fantastic William Wates Memorial Trust. WWMT gives funding and support to organisations and projects which help disadvantaged young people by keeping them away from a life of crime.
Please visit my fundraising page at http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/TomHoldaway.
Alternatively, if you would like to sponsor me but do not want to do so online, let me know and I will cycle over to collect your donation in person (within reason obviously - I am not cycling too far!).
I am now just £120 short of my fundraising target. It would be awesome if I can get to my target before I leave for France!
Shout-outs
I am really grateful to everybody who has helped or sponsored me. Special thank yous go out to Sasha, Rachel, Charlotte, the generous shoppers of the Galleries and some very, very kind anonymous donors.
Thank you also to The Galleries for letting me fundraise in their shopping centre, to Richard (again) for loaning me his turbo trainer, to Hannah and Sarah for all of your help and support with setting up the event and to everybody else who came along and helped or said hello. It really was a team effort and I am grateful to everybody for their help.
Thank you for reading!
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