Tour dy Wales (COMPLETED!... no steroids, blood-doping etc)

Shwmae!

Thank you for visiting my fundraising page for Cycling Wales for Darfur and Chad.

I will be cycling around (the perimeter of) Wales from 14 July to raise money for the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) which has launched an urgent appeal for the Darfur and Chad humanitarian crisis.

I will cover a distance of approximately 800 miles through some very physically challenging terrain in . I hope to average 100 miles each day, so it should take me 8 days to complete the trip beginning and ending in Cardiff . For those familiar with Cardiff , this is like cycling from Cardiff to Brecon Beacons and back (a distance of 110 miles) in one day and doing this consecutively for 8 days. 14 July is the date I have indicated as my push-off date but this depends on the unpredictable Welsh weather.  [Update: I have delayed my push-off date to Mon 16th as the International Musical Eisteddfod in mid-Wales seems to have wiped out all available hostel beds for miles around for the weekend.]

As you know, Darfur/Chad has become the scene of one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. The human suffering is enormous. More than 4.5 million people have been affected by conflict in the region. One child in five is suffering from acute malnutrition, and the mortality rates are catastrophic.  To view the BBC video please click here, or here for a text message.

The impending rainy season has the potential to result in huge loss of life. With malnutrition levels rising, life-saving food and medicine stocks are urgently needed before the downpours hit. The situation is desperate.

Every pound given will help

What your money can buy:

·  £25 could buy plastic sheeting to shelter an entire family.  

·  £80 could feed five critically malnourished children for a month. 

·  £200 could buy a tap stand to provide one and a half thousand people with water – every day.

Please help me raise £3,000 or more for the DEC. It is me asking for your money but it is thousands of very real people like you and me who are dying, caught up in a political conflict that is none of their doing, who will benefit from your generosity and kindness.

Donating through this site is simple, fast and totally secure. It is also the most efficient way to sponsor me: Disasters Emergency Committee will receive your money faster and, if you are a UK taxpayer, an extra 28% in tax will be added to your gift at no cost to you.

Your generous support will save lives. It will also spur me on to the finishing point (when my knees won't).

Thank you for taking the time to look at my fundraising page. I hope you will be able to help.

Wendy

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Trip Updates:

Saturday 16/6

Met up with experienced cyclists at a reception organised by Cardiff Cycle in conjunction with National Bike Week. Hoping to get some information on routes, road conditions, and general ideas and tips but nobody there had heard of anyone attempting such a feat before. "Don't be stupid, do 50 miles a day and take twice as long" was the friendly advice all around. "You'll have more fun this way." "But I'm not doing this for fun!" was my reply. More gentle warnings, "It will be a tough ride - this is , be prepared for hills everywhere!"
Am now trying to figure out what are the best maps to use (1:100,000? 150,000?) and to find my way around the bewildering array of technical bike equipment. Fortunately I have a secret weapon - a bike guru by the name of Reuben Hamon whom I met while cycling around St Fagans in May. Met Reubs on Ascension Sunday and indeed he has been a Godsend; without his help and advice I would not have been able to even contemplate a stunt like this.

Martin of The Bike Shed Cardiff has also offered free servicing of my bike and to show me how to repair punctures, carry out simple repairs, and figure out what tools I'll need to bring – absolutely essential for a solo cyclist who thus far has not ventured beyond gym bikes. Thanks Martin!

Sunday 17/6

First training long ride from Cardiff to Brecon Beacons and back. Took a wrong turn at Pontypridd (this is about one third of the way out) and ended up on the A470 instead (Gwyn from Sustrans was right: everyone does get lost at Pontypridd the first time), so estimated distance covered was a mere 90 miles (instead of 110 miles that I had intended to cover via the longer Taff trail). Ride was marred by the rain but this is , see.

What I learnt on this ride: How to change gears without swerving too much and giving the driver of the vehicle behind a near heart attack. Aim for the 4 inches between the cats' eyes and drain covers on the road shoulder (or be prepared for nasty saddle sores after). Bring spare socks - preferably 2 pairs - and keep them dry! Stock up on Mars Bars.

Total saddle time: 8 hours.

Verdict: Will need to train much more on hills, but otherwise happy that I made it back to Cardiff before midnight and that my 20km run the day before did not seem to have affected my ride.

Monday 18/6

Without telling me, Reubs had sneakily bought a lighter bike for me off ebay AND had taken the train all the way down to Bristol to pick it up from Tom Markham of Station Road, Yate, Bristol. After learning what the bike was intended for, Tom refused to accept money for his bike! Thank you Tom, I won’t let you down! And Reubs, we need to talk... 

Saturday 23/6

Second training long ride from Cardiff to Bath return (120 miles). I came, I saw, I…bonked (runners call this "hitting the wall", because that is exactly what it feels like). In my haste to meet my friends in Bath at a prearranged time, I had ignored the old ultra-marathoner’s secret: eat often, and eat early. 6 hours of riding, stopping to refuel only once while pushing the steep hills in Bath , paying the price for my indiscretion on my return leg when just across the Severn I ran into a fierce headwind which I battled all 30 miles to Cardiff . Exhausted, chilled to the bone, alone in the dark. Trying to stay positive and remember how I completed my first marathon at 16: One. Step. At. A. Time.

Lessons learnt: To cycle 100 miles a day, one needs to train to cycle 120miles. Check windspeed and direction and adjust expectations accordingly. Refuel every hour!

Sunday 24/6

Tried out my new racer from Tom today! Reubs had painstakingly stripped, painted, and refitted it with new tyres, brakes, saddle, mudguards and other nice bits and bobs which he thought might help for the trip, including a bike computer! (I fall into the camp of ‘Einstein’ cyclists who after a workout prefers to crunch numbers, rather than the camp of ‘Zen’ cyclists who write poems and essays afterwards). 20 hours of painstaking work by Reub not including time spent shopping for bike parts; how he got any sleep during this time is a mystery to me.

Never having ridden a racer before, on my first ride out on the traffic-free Taff trail, on which I first learnt to ride my MTB (mountain bike) last month, I misjudged my speed, braked too hard to avoid my buddy Piotrek’s backwheel, and flew over the handlebars into the grass verge. I’m told I’m not the only person to have done that on their first go at a racer!

Tuesday 26/6

I have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of generosity and encouragement from friends and family. I mean, I always knew that in a world of givers and takers, my friends were all givers, no doubt about that. But I mean, wow! The people in Darfur/Chad really need every pound so it is going to a worthy cause. Thank you for your support everyone !!!

Wednesday 27/6

My brother Eric has taken some time off peering through his microscope and fiddling with his PCR machine in his biomedical lab to send me these links on Darfur :

 US Holocaust Museum : http://www.ushmm.org/googleearth/
Amnesty International: http://www.eyesondarfur.org/

Crisis in Darfur is the first online mapping initiative of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM)'s Genocide Prevention Mapping Initiative. Using coordinates provided by the Museum, Google acquired high-resolution imagery over the region of Darfur and Eastern Chad so now we can witness the destruction in Darfur via Google Earth.

 “When it comes to responding to genocide, the world's record is terrible. We hope this important initiative with Google will make it that much harder for the world to ignore those who need us the most."

 — Sara J. Bloomfield, Director, USHMM

Thursday/Friday 28-29/6

Third training long ride from Cardiff to Pembrokeshire (Marloes Sands) return (120 miles x 2 days), this time on the racer! 15 mph headwind on the way out - felt like I was cycling through syrup - but getting a nice push on the journey back. Played touch rugby with Welsh buddy Sulien and friends from Cardiff University the evening before. Was particularly frisky not only because it was freezing but also hoping to tire the legs out to imitate low-energy conditions during the actual 8 days.

Other objectives:  To see what it would be like riding with everything I needed for 8 days on my back; and also what it was like staying in a YHA dorm. But thank you very much Peter for offering your mum’s place at Newport, Pembrokeshire – most appreciated !!

Lessons learnt: Lose the kitchen sink!!!!!! I don’t really need that tube of friction burn cream do I?  And make sure the hostel has a dryer – getting into cold wet clothes in addition to rainsoaked shoes for a 5 am start the next morning isn’t the most cheerful way to begin the day!

Total saddle time: 9 hours (day 1), 8:30 (day 2). Average speed: 12.7 mph (day 1); 13.8 mph (day 2).

Thursday 5/7

I have finally plotted out my detailed route and booked all my hostel beds. I am delaying my push-off date to Mon 16th because the International Musical Eisteddfod in mid-Wales seems to have wiped out all available hostel beds for miles around for the weekend. Unfortunately, the weather is not looking good next week; a low pressure system which should be in Iceland at this time of year has cruised to UK instead and refuses to buzz off, causing rainfall records to topple throughout the country (newsflash from Met Office: “The Future is Wet…”). So it is true that cyclists in don’t tan, they rust… Anyway, rather than delaying my trip any further (who’s to say the weather will improve), and with daylight hours shortening each passing day, I’ve decided to invest in a proper rainjacket, batten down the hatches and make the best of a wet week.

My planned route covers 805 miles and 67,473 feet of climbs. Wanting to tackle the hardest parts when I’m still fresh, I will travel anti-clockwise. In short, I will head first through the “spine of Wales” on the cycling version of Offa's Dyke (>11,000 feet of climbs per day), circle the Isle of Anglesey in North Wales, and power down the West coast, before limping East to Cardiff.

Friday the 13th (July)

3 days to go!!!  Whoo and indeed hoo!!!  Minimal training this week, I am carbo-loading and on the “magic taper”.  It’s been tough resisting the temptation to do “just one more” long ride but I figured the long rides I’ve done so far have had their effect: I am now convinced that success will be 90% mental, and that I can cover distances longer than I'd already tried, so long as I don't "redline" and go into the anaerobic zone (this may mean getting off and pushing up the steeper hills).  It seems the long rides have been as much about conditioning the head as the body...

Reuben has been fiddling nonstop with my bike, adding an additional set of brake levers that would be easier for my smallish hands to reach; and moving the gears sticks from their original position on the frame to the handlebars so that I won’t have to take one hand off the handlebar when changing gears (I no longer cycle white-knuckled but am still shaky cycling with one hand). Unfortunately it has just not been possible to add a third chainring-crankset – something which Bicycling Magazine considers “mandatory” for touring in hilly terrain because of the bail-out or ‘granny’ gears (so called because the gear ratio is so low one’s granny is supposed to be able to climb a steep hill with it) – to my bike’s traditional racer’s two-chainring crankset; this is particularly important for less-than-Olympian riders like me who are always trying to find a lower gear. Tricky business, all this bike modifying, but Reub is quite a grease monkey and I’ve no doubt all is under control.

Got my new cleated Shimano shoes recently. This was followed by a minor bout of the dreaded ‘cleatus interruptus’ (i.e. neglecting to unclip one's feet from one's pedals when one suddenly finds oneself stationary). I had practised on the trails before venturing to the roads, and indeed I had remembered to unclip my standing foot at the red light. But in trying to balance upright while stationary, on the bike which is just slightly too big for me, I found myself slowly tipping over to the other – clipped foot – side. Only realised at the last millisecond that the foot was still attached to the pedal. It was all I could do to unclip it before totally spilling over, much to the amusement of on-looking car drivers who I'm sure never had so much free entertainment at a red light before. 

Have yet to master the art of doing the ‘standing climb’ with cleats on (or even off) but I am guessing I will have ample opportunity to learn soon enough!

Tuesday 24th July

Well it's finally over! As it turned out, the distance wasn't the hard part, it was the  exposure. I am chicken when it comes to cold, and would never ever have signed up for anything that involved a test of 'let's-see-how-long-you-can-survive-in-cold'. But during this trip, I was forced to deal with whatever the weather decided to throw at me, and realise now that I am my worst enemy. Rather than throwing in the towel too quickly in the face of one's biggest fears, with the right attitude, one can always figure a way. And that determination, however small it may seem, can be so much more than what it appears.

So I have caught the flu and am down with fever and complete and total nasal congestion. Have lost my voice and just squeezing out toothpaste from the tube is a struggle (or perhaps it has to do with the death grip on the handlebars going down steep hills at 40mph). But I am glad I started on this cathartic adventure. I have met some incredible people and made some interesting acquaintances. I have renewed old ties, gained insight into people's characters, discovered where I stand with friends, and perhaps too, where they stand with giving to charity! But most importantly, together, we have all raised more than £3K for the people of Darfur and Chad, for whom death and suffering is a daily affair, and about whom this whole event was about.

I shall be updating this site with pictures and comments of my Tour in due course (when I recover sufficiently) so please do check in again from time to time if you wish. The site will be open for online donations until September, so until then please do send this link around to anyone you think may be interested. Every pound (or Sing dollar) does help the people of Darfur and Chad.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for supporting Cycling Wales for Darfur and Chad 2007. If along the way our paths had crossed and you'd like to contact me, or if you'd just like to get in touch me with me for any reason, my email address is wndyyp@yahoo.co.uk. I would love to hear from you!

Wendy

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to:

Reuben Hamon!!! - Bike Building, Kitting & Technical

Lee Yih Gia (my husband) - Chief Fundraiser (Singapore)

Eric Yap (my brother) – Web ideas & updating; 24/7 real-time weather & route advice

Jan Vyjidak - Fundraising & Publicity (Wales)

Piotrek Spiewanowski - Slogging it out with me on training rides, and for just being there at other times!

Peter Davison - Detailed route comments; Ultracycling / cyclotouring tips. Fantastic advice!

Tom Markham - For a very smooth bike!

Roy Spilsbury, Gwyn Roberts, and Cliff Jones from Cyclists' Touring Club www.ctc.org.uk - For expert navigation through the tricky North Wales cycling route & A44 to within 3 miles of my hostel in Bangor, tips on cycling in Wales, and for warm camaraderie on the way and after.

Ken Knuckles (Owner, Pant-yr-Athro International Hostel) – Free lodging at Llansteffan nr Carmarthen, encouragement & great conversation!

Sue & Steve (Owners, Springhill Farm, Oswestry) - Spontaneous generosity with food which I couldn't carry with me up the big mountain!

Pierce (Day 2, Springhill Farm) – For your kind words and unconditional generosity. Thank you for reminding me that I am making a difference. You inspired me through the rest of the 600 miles, and continue to do so. My only regret is not taking down your contact details! If you are reading this, please do contact me, I would love to keep in touch with you.

Lynn (Shell Station, Sketty nr Swansea) – For hot coffee and shelter from rain on the miserable last day into Cardiff.

MacDonalds @ Caernarfon – For letting me in out of the wind rain and cold, saving me from hypothermia on Day 5.

Bike Shed Cardiff – For looking over my bike before departure. It was so wet and some hills so steep, I would have been terrified except for knowing my brakes had been checked out fine by 2 sets of expert eyes.

Last but not least:

ALL DONORS – Although one of the aims of this project was to raise awareness of the humanitarian crises in Sudan, it had in fact been conceived in response to DEC’s urgent appeal in May for funds for Darfur / Chad. To put it quite bluntly, the idea was to raise funds. So, very sincerely, THANK YOU VERY VERY MUCH to all donors, for coming through with the Moolah!