Ride of my life

Lots of emails have been flying backwards and forwards so let me start by thanking you all for your hard work and effort in to this web site and challenge, I don't know if it is because you love me, love the idea or your just scared of my sister, but thank you.

I am really excited and nervous all at the same time. This started with just a wacky idea and now it's more real than I can believe!! Every day when I train in the gym or on the bike I'm thinking of you all and the emails that you had sent that day. The effort going into the smallest detail to make this whole challenge work is an inspiration to me to push harder and go faster.

Just to let you know that this Saturday I have my first race coming up, this will be my first competitive race in my life!!

This week I am taking it very easy with no or very little training, I am resting completely and having lots of physio work as I have strained my back, left knee and right tricep. This is not through accident, it's just from lots of kms on the bike over the last 4 weeks. Now I have stopped for a few days all the aches and pains are coming out, so I have a real big push to get ready for Saturday.

The race on Saturday is for 14 hours. I guess that I will be disqualified for not finishing on time, but that's not important, I just want to finish. I will have Cenk on standby in the afternoon to continue the support once the race has finished and also to drive me home afterwards. I think my time will be more like 17 - 18 hours. The Tramauntana mountain range is just a killer, it will spit me out at the end and I will be destroyed, I will then have another 200kms to do!!!

Wish me luck for Saturday, and once again thank you all so so much, with such a good team behind me, I feel we are going to do really well with charities and raising some really good money too.

Love

Benj