The Hills Make Thighs

300 miles, mountains to the right of them, beaches to the left of them and no way out of Barry other than up at least three massive hills! What were we thinking?!

We recently had new bikes for our ride – both Pen and I asked for bikes for our birthdays for the first time in about 18 years! Excitingly enough – this was what we got! They are very pretty bikes and are made all the nicer by the flowers that are on the frames, but most importantly they are ‘hybrids’ meaning that it is possible to change almost everything on them to make them more appropriate for the kind of ride we are doing. For example, at the moment we are riding with the wrong tyres – we should be using road tyres but as we know we will have to do more work on mountain tyres, we are using these initially so that our training is as effective as possible. Both Pen and I felt that we should make our initial training as difficult as possible so that we appreciate the amount of work that we will have to do! I don’t know whether this is a sensible option or not and no doubt we will find out before too long!

All in all our training isn’t going too badly. Since our trip to Cosmeston the other week we have been doing a few miles as and when we can in readiness for the next BIG push. This one will be from the house to the church on Victoria Road in Penarth (where our parents got married) and will mean a 20 mile round trip. We are planning to do this journey on Saturday (08/11/08) and are hoping to be back within about 2 hours. This will obviously mean an average of 10 miles an hour, but considering the hilly nature of the Vale of Glamorgan and the fact that we are still in the early stages of training– 10 miles an hour isn’t as easy as it might sound!

Otherwise things really are starting to hit home. Our official fundraising packs have arrived, complete with T-Shirts and stickers and we have been given £255 so far by friends and family towards our adventure on the www.justgiving.com/joandpenni page that we set up. Because people have been so generous we really feel that we are getting somewhere, all of a sudden the adventure seems very real and 2009 seems very close. Still – we are 10% of the way to our target and are really starting to enjoy the experience. We still have a long way to go, but the ball is rolling and things have really started!

Until the next time,
Take great care,
Loadsa love, Jx