Greetings friends, family & colleagues,

It has come to that time again that I’ve felt compelled to challenge body and mind by embracing the male mid-life-crisis past-time of choice, this time in support of the British Paralympic Association.   A fitting  charity to support in this exciting Olympic year for London with the Paralympic Games imminent I fully expect them to have the same inspirational impact on people with disability to go out and find a new sport to participate in and continue to change perception of people with disability.  My own personal experience with sport for the people with disabilities happened in my childhood when I used to attend scouts in a troop whom’ membership consisted of a number of local area kids with disabilities.  I still clearly remember the highlights of my scout days were the mixed ability indoor hockey games which largely consisted of able-bodied scouts being chased and smacked around the ankles with hockey sticks:- character building indeed!

 

So what is it I’m doing?  This year, On Sept 12, I’m part on the Day 5 team of Cisco team participating in the Deloitte Ride Across Britain.  Don’t worry – I’ve not gone completely bonkers – I’m not taking on the entire ride myself – I thought it  would be sufficiently ambitious to take on just one day of 109 miles from Haydock to Penrith.  This should be tough enough considering I’ve never cycled more than 40miles at a time and I’ve only done that a couple of times.  To keep it appropriately testing I thought I should stick to my personal charity challenge ethos of ‘no train for max pain’ and thus I’ve embarked on very little of what could be described as appropriate preparation for such an event.  Having not done a lot to date, I’m about to head-off this week for 10day’s in Turkey – not for an intense altitude training camp – no, that is simply a somewhat unfortunately timed family summer holiday.  So when I return from holiday I hit my taper week – that key part of training and preparation where you rest your body to store up your energy for the event.  I’m not sure what that will involve for me given there is frankly nothing left to taper off!

So, now for your easy part.  

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate - I raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charity.

So please dig deep and donate now and support me, the Cisco RAB team and this great cause.

Of course I will oblige with a post event synopsis & hell, I might even allow myself to tweet about it.  No promises there though – I’ve never been one for cutting short a good story because of a character limit.

 Thanks in anticipation.

 Regards, Ian