Thank you for visiting my fundraising page for this years Monster Bike & Hike Challenge. Please dig deep and sponsor me online.

Me and six of my colleagues from Grant Thornton Glasgow Office embarked on a mammoth 30 mile cycle and 40 mile walk/run to help raise funds for Maggie's Cancer Caring Centres.  The annual event organised by Maggie's Centres takes place on the Great Glen Way (Scotland) from Fort William to Inverness.  The recommended completion time for the route is 3+days.  The challenge was to complete it within 24Hours.  

The challenge took place on the 29 April 2006.  You can still donate through this webpage until 30 June 2006.

Event Diary

The challenge itself was a lot tougher than I had anticipated. To be honest it was the longest sustained period of pain that I have ever experienced.  It never ever crossed my mind that the

Great Glen Way, despite being a recognized hiking route for experienced hikers, would be anything other than a flat pathway from start to finish.  The reality was considerably different with the majority of the course hilly, rocky and muddy.

 

We all set out from Fort William on bikes at 0800 on the Saturday morning and quickly splintered off into groups.  This was nothing to do with the relative fitness of the different team members but more to do with the blatant disregard by a few (including myself) of the idea of pacing oneself to last the entire 73 miles. 

 

By 1220 and after only one “over the handle bars” experience the group that I was in had completed the cycle section and swiftly moved on to the 9 mile hike to Fort Augustus .  Despite the already significant pain and still going at an unsustainable pace we managed to blitz this section in less than 2 hours. 

 

From Fort Augustus we embarked on the 16 mile section to Drumnadrochit that on the face of it was the worst section of the course having the most extreme terrain.  The quick pace that we had set dropped considerably in this section while the pain increased fourfold.  Towards the end of this section a course steward advised us of the correct direction to “hobble” which suggested that we must have looked less than fit at that stage. 

 

With 18 miles left, nightfall setting in and temperatures destined to fall below zero anytime soon we set out on the Gold section of the course to Inverness .  By this stage the only thing that mattered was to complete the challenge.  The sight of Red Cross emergency vehicles passing us every quarter of an hour or so looked pretty ominous as the number of participants on the Gold section continued to fall.  However, despite sub zero temperatures, vivid hallucinations, incoherent conversations with the support team and the general inability to communicate we hobbled/crawled over the line at a little after four on the Sunday morning making it an overall time of 20 hours and 20 minutes.

 

 

You can read more about the work Maggie's Centre do at www.maggiescentres.org

Please donate to this charity online, we all know someone who has been touched by cancer and it never hurts to reflect on that for a moment and dig deep to help others.

Please help us reach and exceed our fundraising target by donating through this site.  

Donating through this site is simple, fast and totally secure. It is also the most efficient way to sponsor me: Maggie's Centres 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.
So please sponsor me now!

Many thanks for your support.