Thank you for taking the time to visit my JustGiving web page.

Five years ago I embarked on a mission to lose some weight and, to help speed things up, decided that, along with dieting, I needed to undertake some form of exercise.

At the time my father-in–law, a keen cyclist himself, suggested to me that cycling might be a good start. So I dusted the bike off in my garage and began regular cycling with him.

Today, three bikes and several broken spokes later, I’m now four stone lighter and still continuing to love cycling very much.

I normally take part in at least two local charity bike rides a year and first noticed the to Paris (L2P) bike ride advertised about two years ago.  I thought I would like to take part, but the amount of sponsorship money required was a bit of a worry, more so than the ride itself.

Three months ago my brother invited me to consider entering the May 2011 L2P ride, with him and another friend and I jumped at the chance.

I started looking into which of a number of local charities could benefit from my anticipated mix of enjoyment and pain, whilst pedalling all this way (some 300 miles).

I finally decided that it should be a children’s charity and I have chosen The Edward Starr Trust, which is a relatively new charity that is focused on “helping children smile”.

The Trust exists to improve the lives of children in the and around the world, by funding many different types of projects, that give benefit to children through education, healthcare, development or simply fun.

This is the perfect charity for children, as it does not discriminate against anyone and is helping more and more children to smile.

So please log on to their website and check out the fantastic things they have already achieved.

Please dig deep and give generously, so that together we can help even more children to smile tomorrow, by our actions today.

Obviously, between now and the event, next May, I need to focus on the development and implementation of a suitable training programme. 

To that end I plan to take advantage of Lance Armstrong’s Performance Programme; but, unlike him, my focus will be on getting in shape for the ‘Tour to ’, rather than the ‘Tour de France’!

From time to time I will E-mail you with an update on my training progress, but you can also include my web page address in your Favourites, so that you can easily revisit my page whenever you like.      

Thank you for your support.

John Lippett