An Awfully BIG Adventure!

My sister and I have decided to cycle from London to Paris next July! 270 miles in 4 days making an average of 67.5 miles a day and all in the name of charity! We have our bikes, we have our helmets, we have the registration forms, we have the drive to succeed and we have to raise £2,500 between us! (Hint hint!) This blog is going to be a working diary, somewhere to record our progress while we train for our challenge and is a way of publicising the event.

I have a number of personal reasons for wanting to do this. Some of them may seem a little extreme or unreasonable but they are all centred on the one issue. In 2005 I was diagnosed with Relapsing and Remitting Multiple Sclerosis (MS), a degenerative disease of the Central Nervous System (CNS) but a condition that, for whatever reason often generates a lot of bad, overindulgent and extremist press. I would like to present another side to the story and show that not everyone affected by MS is trying to work out the most legal way to kill themselves, that a lot of us are taking one day at a time, trying to get on with things in the best way that we can and deal with the, lets be honest, lousy hand that we have been dealt.

I may have MS but I am not writing this because I want sympathy or because I want the country to know that it is such a terrible condition that I should be pitied for having it. I am writing this to tell everyone that although it can be terrible it doesn’t have to be doom and gloom all the time. People with MS can often lead reasonably ‘normal’ lives, we can buy houses, have families, look after pets, keep working, studying (or both), ride bicycles and we can still be counted on to help our friends and family whenever they need us.

So, in conclusion to my first ever blog entry: my sister and I are going to train for a year, ride our bikes to Paris, I am going to record our progress on this blog and always remember that if it wasn’t me it would be someone else and we are going to raise an absolute fortune for the MS Trust! Always remembering that I love Marks and Spencer’s, I may have MS, but I also have an MSc!!!

Until the next instalment – take great care all,
Love, Jo xxx