Saturday 3 September 2011

So whats all this about then?

I thought I would start this blog with a bit of scene setting. I like cycling and I'm lucky enough to live in beautiful North Devon. I also like beer and food so despite riding my bike up various steep hills on every ride I'm built like a man who knows how to live well.

Despite being 'optimised for gravity' I have a love of cycling in hilly terrain and was really pleased when the book 100 Greatest Cycling Climbs: A Road Cyclists Guide to Britains Hills was brought out just over a year ago. I figured the book offered a good target for me to aim at, namely riding all of the hills featured in it, which would be a great project to try and complete and undoubtedly good for my fitness.

Sadly my cycling over the last 18 months has been sporadic. My plans to get going on the hills nearest to me last summer took a backseat as tragedy hit my family and we lost my mum to breast cancer. The depression and grief I have felt since my mum's death has started to fade into the background and so I've decided now is the time to ressurect my plans. Cycling is, after all, good for the soul.

Completing my self imposed challenge of riding all one hundred hills also has another dimension for me now as I would like to use it as an opportunity to raise money for charity. I'm still in the process of setting up the sponsorship links and planning which hills to tackle and when so watch this space. It is my intention to start next Spring so I have a fair bit of time to get in shape.

Stay tuned for details on how the training goes and how the fund raising for charity progresses. For die hard cycling fans I'll be sorting out a helmet cam so you can watch the countryside creep past slowly to the soundtrack of a fat man having a physical breakdown...

Oh and the name of the blog? "The elastic has snapped" is a term used by the cycling commentator Paul Sherwin a lot when the Tour de France gets to the high mountain stages. Apparently even the best cyclists suffer from this when the road goes up. I suspect I won't be immune in the coming months.