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Ben, Carl & Doug London To Paris MS Trust Challenge
This year, 3 of us regular riders here at Wiggle felt we needed a bit of a challenge, each for different reasons, and an event cropped up that was perfect. A family member works for the Multiple Sclerosis Trust, who are taking part in a London to Paris bike ride in June. We all felt that would give us something to aim for and raise money for a very worthwhile charity at the same time. There is also a small possibility we may enjoy it a little!
The ride its self is spread over four days, the first leg starts with London to Dover (125km), then getting on a ferry to Calais in France where we will stay the night, then Calais to Abbeville (120km) on the second day, Abbeville to Beauvais (110km) on the third, finishing with the slightly more comfortable Beauvais to Paris (only 95km) on the forth day. Our ride will then come to an end under the Eiffel tower, relief and elation should then ensue! We aren’t embarking on this alone though, in total there will be 20 people representing the MS Trust but a number of other charities are also getting involved with like minded people representing them as well.
All signed up, sponsorship forms in hand and bikes between legs, we are ready to begin the challenge.
The 3 of us are Carl, Ben and Doug. Myself and Ben are full-time workshop mechanics and Doug is split between order processor and workshop mechanic. If you have bought a bike from Wiggle, there is a good chance it was assembled and set up by one of us!
We take pride in our work and obviously hope you are pleased with your purchases from us, and if you are, maybe we could ask if you could give a little back and make a donation towards our ride!
We have set up a sponsorship page on justgiving, where you can safely and securely make a donation which in turn is forwarded directly to the charity.
You can find our page at www.justgiving.com/teamwiggle
The MS Trust is a UK charity, providing information for anyone affected by multiple sclerosis, education programmes for health professionals, funding for practical research and campaigning for specialist multiple sclerosis services.
MS Trust Vision
The MS Trust is a charity which works with and for the 85,000 people in the UK with MS. Their vision is to enable people with MS to live their lives to the full.
The MS Trust provides:
* Information that is tailored to what people want to know
* Education for health professionals about what people with MS need
* Research into better management of MS
* Support for anyone affected by MS
MS Trust Mission
Their mission is to make a real difference for people with MS through the provision of information and professional education, by funding practical research and by campaigning for the improvement of MS services.
They work to the highest possible standards and actively seek opportunities to work with other organizations to provide real benefit for people with MS.
The MS Trust believes that people with MS should:
* Have access to high quality services to enable them to maintain as active a lifestyle as possible.
* Have access to trained health care professionals such as MS specialist nurses.
* Be equal partners with the professionals in making choices about their health care.
* Have the information to help make the right choices for them.
Let us tell you a bit about ourselves and our motivation to ride these 300 miles over 4 days.
Carl:
I have been riding for years but got back into riding reasonably often when I started with Wiggle in 2007. I was planning to get a decent amount of fitness and do a few races in 2008 but early in the year I developed firstly dodgy knees, later finding out it was actually the onset of glandular fever. This knocked me out for most of the year, only starting to ease off around October and I started to get back into the occasional ride. My garage was then broken into and all my bikes and kit were stolen…I really wasn’t destined to ride in 2008!
A winter without bikes and now at last I have new bikes and a healthy(ish) body, ready to ride again!
So for me, the ride is about getting back to full fitness; physically it shouldn’t pose much of a problem as long as my knees hold up and I get into a decent training regime, but it’s about the challenge of raising money for charity too, which is where I’ve struggled in the past.
Ben:
I have been riding bikes since the age of 8 and always enjoy myself whether I’m out on the road bike, or night riding in the snow at the local trail. I enjoy the freedom that you get from being out on a bike. I always had aspirations of getting into some category of racing but soon found myself enjoying being a mechanic more and riding just for fun. However, this fun once turned to sadness when I had my bikes stolen twice in the space of two months, late 2007 and early 2008. This put a stop to my riding for a total of 8 months.
Like Carl, I want to use this event to work on my fitness and also my endurance. Also, I have never participated in a charity event before and see this as a chance to make a big difference to someone’s future. I am also enjoying the challenge of raising the money for the event; it’s a lot harder than you may think. I am looking forward to the huge sense of achievement that I will feel when we arrive under the Eiffel Tower.
Doug:
Well I’m the youngest of us three, I live breathe eat and sleep Downhill mountain biking, raced almost a full season last year cutting it short in September due to the cost! I’ve only been with Wiggle for a little under a year and in that time I’ve started XC riding and a very small amount of road, aiming, like the other two, to build up my fitness. I’m going to start a training routine in March in the build up to the ride mainly to prepare my behind for the pain I imagine i’ll endure. I’m not too sure how to ride one of these road bike contraptions, but as long as I can fit some two inch tires to one I’m sure I’ll be fine.
I think it’s fair to say a passion for cycling in general is rife amongst us three, for instance after leaving college 2 years ago I’ve done nothing but work with, ride, and race bikes. So a nice big challenge like this ride is going to be nothing short of awesome, Even more so the fact that we are giving something back to people in need whilst out enjoying ourselves.
We are all planning to hold some events to raise our sponsorship target, but need to raise a significant amount, the majority of which needs to be with the charity well before the event in June. Any donation, no matter how big or small will be greatly appreciated by us and the MS Trust. We shall aim to update the blog with our progress on training and sponsorship, so please stay tuned!