Only 10 days to go until the off and as the briefing for the trip hit the inbox yesterday it all started to get a bit real! It is clear that getting 83 riders to the South of France is no mean feat and requires a lot of thought, organisation, and some clear rules for the riders, which whilst grown adults will no doubt degenerate into children for the week. It was all there and after reading it a couple of times I do admit to feeling excitingly nervous!

Suddenly setting off from Greenwich in a group (sorry peloton) of 83 seems a million miles away from my training which has been largely on my own, hammering/ambling along the country lanes of Yorkshire. My training has gone reasonably well and I have managed to do most of what I set out to achieve, however I have also picked up some annoying pains and niggles along the way that will undoubtedly come back all at once during some stage of the ride.

This weekend saw an enforced rest day on Saturday due to a combination of a slightly over zealous performance at the Boston Spa Beer Festival on Friday night and thankfully a covering of snow on Saturday morning. It’s grim up North!

Sunday morning was great however; I headed out with a local group of cyclists that have been riding together for 15 years. The format was straight forward meet at the school at 9.00am, then a blast for a couple of hours and then back to designated chef for the day’s house for bacon butties and a few glasses of brandy. It was a very civilised morning although the pace was pretty brisk as well as the brandy.

So with the training notching down a couple of gears I need to get the essentials sorted this week and top of the list is BUM cream! My fellow Urban Splash Director Nick Johnson who did the trip a few years ago has told me that I need two tubs, which I am not sure to take as an insult or simply that a generous application is required!

I still need a good push on my charity donations, you can sponsor me here, and want to say a big thank you to those that have very kindly donated already and thank you in advance to those of you who are thinking about getting round to it!