Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page.

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Well what am I doing to earn your sponsorship? I and a group of 5 friends are attempting to cycle from Land's End to John O'Groats over a 906 mile route that takes in the highest classified road in the UK (in the Cairngorms). We aim to do this over 10 days in May, with the longest day being 107 miles! Believe it or not, when we arrive in Carlisle on night 5, we will only be half way! Scotland is much bigger than many think.  

This will require an average of 5 - 8 hours of cycling a day plus stops (for lots of food - we'll be burning an extra 5000 calories a day!). So every day will be long and tough. On day one, for example, it starts to get hilly at about 55 miles. We climb some 1300ft over the next 40 miles as we leave the Cornish coast at St Austell and head for the Devon moors to finish in Tavistock.

I've been training hard and at least once a fortnight I have been attempting to get in a long ride (at least 80 miles), but the thought of doing more than that every day for 10 days is pretty daunting. Currently, I have a problem with the cycling equivalent of "hitting the wall" and what the cycling fraternity calls "the bonk"! This is where your muscles get totally depleted of glycogen (the form that sugars are stored in the muscles) and regardless how willing the mind is, your legs just stop working. This has been affecting me after about 4 - 5 hours of cycling and appears to be regardless of how much food I've managed to eat (Chip butties and bara brith are clearly not enough!). It makes the last hour or two of cycling pretty unpleasant. And the advice from my more experienced friends? Eat even more! Or as one friend said "just man up"! I prefer the former.

My 4 year old niece Amy suffers from juvenile (or Type 1) diabetes and requires 5 insulin injections and 6 or more blood tests every day. JDRF is a charity dedicated to finding a cure for this currently incurable life-threatening illness and funds research with this aim. Managing the condition is a tremendous and frustrating burden in the short term, and in the longer term people with type 1 diabetes are likely to develop all kinds of serious health problems, so countless families affected by diabetes are desperate to find a cure.

So anything you can give will be gratefully received and at the same time, you can enjoy the thought of my suffering.