My last post was to say three friends and I were doing a 240 mile, 24hr charity bike ride for the British Heart Foundation.
I can now say... we did it! Yaaaaaassssss! 240 miles of hell, the most gruelling thing we've ever done and probably will do for a looooong time. Despite the pain and utter exhaustion, we sort of enjoyed it in a masochistic kind of way! It was so worth it to ride into the Grand Place to know we'd managed it for all those people who sponsored us (£3900 so far! justgiving), the British Heart Foundation and to complete the challenge we randomly decided to do over a steak one evening, hence our team name.
We did 246.26 miles in 26.5 hours (blame the late ferry for the extra time), at an average of 14.9mph. The hardest part? The ride to Dover, 85 miles of what seemed like continuous uphills, the worst of which we probably should have had climbing gear for. The easiest (surprisingly) was the penultimate and longest 40 mile stage. I think we all knew the finishing line was in sight, so we gritted our teeth, clenched our bums and got on the drop bars to complete it in the quickest time of any of the stages we did. Lance Armstrong would have struggled to keep with us.
There were some thrills and spills, but nothing more than mere flesh wounds. I somehow managed to go the wrong way in Kent but end up at the rendezvous following the wrong (orange not pink) arrows. The greasy and wet tram tracks took a couple of victims (ahem Taha and Raoul) less than two miles from the end (see below) but thankfully we made it in one piece.
taha cut
The other 30 or so people who made it were great companions, and we'd like to thank the guys from Action Challenge who organised and supported the event so brilliantly for the British Heart Foundation.
We landed back in England at 4pm, absolutely shattered and sore in places we didn't even know we had.
Again, thank you to everybody for following and supporting us on our ride, we all appreciate it greatly.
If anybody wants to see some photos, we put a few on Twitter here:
London2Brussels Twitter
James, Taha and Raoul
