Hi!

As the Velo South was cancelled last year, Jo and I decided to go all out and up the stakes and do Ride Across Britain, 990 miles from Land's End to John O'Groats but the rest of the detail remains the same... apart from the fundraising target has increased substantially and no doubt the pain will increase in proportion to that.

As everyone that knows me knows, I don't mind a bike ride but I definitely do not love 'proper' bike rides so what better challenge than to do this to raise some funds for an incredibly worthwhile charity! 

The Cycling Journey

So far it has been a slog with highs and lows.  The training properly started at the start of March but I'd started to try and shift some pounds from December as there was no way I was taking all that weight up those hills so it needed to go.  After a disastrous outing on my hybrid bike I bit the bullet and bought a road bike, that was the start of March and the first outing on it was with Jo on my birthday.

Since then, Jo and I have been training independently and have had some fun together.  I did an 80 mile of the New Forest just to make sure I could do a whole day before Jo and I cycled across Greece at Easter, it was a baptism of fire.  Who knew there are proper mountains in Greece and at Easter still a lot of snow.  So much so that we couldn't get through the top of the pass of one mountain and so had to come down, go round and back up... you can imagine my delight.  Anyway, Greece was EPIC but brilliant and I loved it, hurray and just as well as there's a lot more to come.

Then there has been the Velo Midlands (100 mile closed-road event) and the Isle of Wight Randonee before the The Tour of Wessex.  The ToW is 3 days of hard graft (3x 100 miles) but we needed more big hill practice and more practice for me cycling with lots of other people. Despite a shortened route due to me being sick on day 2, it was another epic few days and I loved it.  It was also an introduction to camping between cycles which brought some additional challenges but it was good to get the practice in before September and we met some great new friends, well, I did, Jo already knew them!

Since then it has been more 100 mile events, a personal trainer once a week for strength training and more just general RPM classes and other cycles to just keep everything ticking over and hopefully a couple more back to backs over the next few weeks.

The event is 7-15th September and I need to raise some much needed funds for Alzheimers in the meantime so if anyone can spare anything upwards of £1, I would be immensely grateful of any support, particularly as I have now lost my friend from the event and am now doing it on my own; Jo has had to defer her place to next year.  So if you were hesitating about sponsoring me, please know that this makes it even harder as the moral support of one of your best friends not being far away is immense so by sponsoring me, you'll be taking that place of Jo's presence and I'll have the knowledge of all of those I'll be pushing those pedals for when it gets tough (I'm still not a fan of hills but it is getting better).

Alzheimers

Dementia is the name for a set of symptoms that includes memory loss and difficulties with thinking, problem-solving or language. Dementia develops when the brain is damaged by diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease. Alzheimer’s disease is a physical disease that affects the brain. It is named after Alois Alzheimer, the doctor who first described it.

The brain is made up of billions of nerve cells that connect to eachother. In Alzheimer’s disease, connections between these cells are lost.  This is because proteins build up and form abnormal structures called ‘plaques’ and ‘tangles’. Eventually nerve cells die and brain tissue is lost.

The brain also contains important chemicals that help to send signals between cells. People with Alzheimer’s have less of some of these ‘chemical messengers’ in their brain, so the signals are not passed on as well.

For most people with Alzheimer’s, the earliest symptoms are memory lapses. In particular, they may have difficulty recalling recent events and learning new information.

Although memory difficulties are usually the earliest symptoms of
Alzheimer’s, someone with the disease will also have – or go on to
develop – problems with other aspects of thinking, reasoning, perception or communication. 

They might have difficulties with:

• language – struggling to follow a conversation or repeating themselves
• visuospatial skills – problems judging distance or seeing objects in three dimensions; navigating stairs or parking the car become much harder  
  
• concentrating, planning or organising – difficulties making
  decisions, solving problems or carrying out a sequence of tasks (such as cooking a meal)  
  
• orientation – becoming confused or losing track of the day or date. 

There is currently no cure for Alzheimer’s disease, but there is a lot
of support available to help someone live well with the condition. This includes drug treatments, and care and support without drugs.

As this could affect any one of us and has already touched many of us through friends and family, I can't think of a better charity to support. 

To put it into figures, there are 850,000 people with dementia in the UK, with numbers set to rise to over 1 million by 2025. This will soar to 2 million by 2051.  225,000 will develop dementia this year, that's one every three minutes. 1 in 6 people over the age of 80 have dementia.

So please sponsor me!

Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Once you donate, they'll send your money directly to the charity so it's an efficient way to donate.  Your details are safe with JustGiving - they'll never sell them on or send unwanted emails.

If anyone would rather donate directly to me in cash / cheque etc. just drop me a note and we can sort that out independently.

Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page, bring on the rest of the training,

Rachel