To mark my 40^th year and to fulfil a life-long dream, I am going to ride a stage of the Tour de France. While doing this I also want to raise money for a local charity: Borders Children's Charity.

The Charity: BCC provides grants for children mostly within Galashiels and Hawick.  It is a small charity that fulfilled £21k of requests in the nine months to February 2011.  So anything you are able to donate will make a very material difference to children in my local area.  The requests typically originate from social workers, health visitors, community nurses and head teachers working with Borders' children in different capacities.  This year grants have been given for clothing, shoes, beds, bedding and bedroom furniture.  These are basics that no children should be without.  The reasons for this are varying but include parents with mental health issues and drug dependencies to name but two.

The Ride: The event I am taking part in is known as l'Etape du Tour and is an official sportive ride supported by the organisers of the Tour itself.  This is the same route that the professional riders will tackle on the previous Sunday.  The stage is described on the official Tour website as 'a real leg-breaker'. It consists of 209km (129 miles) of riding on closed roads with up to 10,000 like-minded fools. For those who want the technical details, as you can see from the profile in the picture, it's a mountainous ride with the highest point reaching 1589m consisting of the 7 official climbs (3 x Cat' 2s, 3 x Cat' 3s and1 x Cat' 4).  This ride is going to hurt.  I'll have trained for this for around 18 months so that I get in the kind of shape that is necessary to complete the ride within the defined time.  If you don't reach certain points within defined times then you are not allowed to continue.

But, as I've been putting myself though all the hard work doing the training I've been consoling myself with the hope that others are going to benefit from my efforts too.