TETM's 24 Hour London to Paris Fundraiser

tetm

Chaps,

Tomorrow I set off in earnest from Blackheath with the longest cycle of my life laid out ahead of me. 450km of roads separate London from Paris, and I’ve got just 24 hours to cycle them. Most of this will be through the night due to the time lost on the ferry, and if the weather man is to be believed, the majority will be in the rain too. Had this been a dry July the prospect wouldn’t be all that bad, however, it’s not, it’s going to be grim. There was the opportunity to do this as a two man relay, of 35 miles on, 35 miles off but filling my bottles with Menopace was never really an option. It’s now up to me to do the whole thing in one hit.

The bottom line of this is I’m raising money for Scope, who help give those with cerebral palsy, and their families, the same opportunities in life as the rest of us. This isn’t a beg, nor a plea, but if I can twist your arm into donating even the most modest sum to such a great charity then I’d be phenomenally appreciative.

If you would like to sponsor me please go to http://www.virginmoneygiving.com/TomTM and pretty please remember gift aid. Any sum whatsoever will be gratefully received by Scope.

All the best,
Tom

tetm

@OptimisticBiker, thank you kindly!

twist83

I will chuck you a few quid later. Strangely the work firewall allows this through but not that site....

Best of luck with it as well! Thats a LOT of riding to do.

tetm

@Twist83, good old IT! That's very kind of you buddy, thanks very much.

Anonymous

Looks awesome, hope you don't get too soaked! Have donated, too.

optimisticbiker

tetm wrote:

@OptimisticBiker, thank you kindly!

yvw and best of luck, its going to be a bit grim I think .. I'll think of you as inspiration as I puff and wheeze up Holme Moss on Sunday morning... at least that's the plan...

tetm

@ShandyH, thank you very much, I shall inspect the French Strava segments now. Place Charles de Gaulles perhaps?!

tetm

@Greg66, unbelievably generous, thank you ever so much, sir!

optimisticbiker

So, tried a quick search but nothing relevant (except this thread) came up... did i miss a thread? What happened, did you do it?

tetm

Chaps, and mainly OB for caring,

Apologies for the tardiness of this response, I've been overly busy recently (and on holiday).

So we left Blackheath in the pissing rain on the Saturday morning, which really set the precedent for the trip. It rained pretty much solidly all the way to Dover. I did, however, manage to nab a Strava KOM for ShandyH though. Stuffed my face at the Dover hot food stop, and then rode onto the ferry. Here 240 soaked souls filled the loos on every deck with their kit under hand driers, and changing in every cubicle. The general public had no chance.

Into France and the roads were immediately awesome, plus there were also large numbers of Bastille Day revellers left over lining the streets with shouts of "allez allez allez" which continued to about 3am. By 12am I was only 50 miles into France, and suddenly realised that I had 11 hours and 140 miles to cover. Sorry to the guys I was with that I ditched, but I just set off, by myself into the dark. After 2 hours of solo pedal mashing I saw a red light in the distance, about a mile away, which then became my goal. Simple maths proved that I was doing 24mph, he was doing 23, and thus it took me an hour of demoralising spinning to catch him. When I got to his wheel he told me that there was a lead group up the road who were the only ones who were going to make it to Paris in the designated 24 hours, so naturally we tucked into a team TT routine and set off in pursuit. Soon enough we picked up another guy who had been dropped by the bunch and between the three of us smashed it back to meet them. We met them at a rest stop at about 0330, but as they were just setting off we only got 4 minutes to down a coffee, fill bottles and get back on the road. Hey ho. We were now a group of about 25, and went trucking off into the early hours of Sunday morning. The pace was pretty relentless, everyone in the group knew that if it dropped we wouldn't make it. If people needed a wee they were left by the roadside alone, if people got a puncture they were abandoned, I watched as people couldn't hack the pace and just drifted off the back. One guys slid out and went crashing across a roundabout, I tried to get the group to stop but they weren't having it. I looked back, two guys were with him, so I stomped on the pedals and re-joined the group. After 250 miles we were still doing 25mph, all taking turns and beginning to enjoy it. We gave ourselves 12 minutes break every 35 miles to minimise time wastage, 15 minutes standing about is a wasted five miles on the road after all. There was a final surge as we got towards Paris, with us all putting in monster adrenalin/caffeine/SiS gel fuelled pulls on the front. Some guys were absolute heroes at this and I have a lot to thank them for!

Eventually we were down to 10 of us, and all crossed the line together as the first guys to the Eiffel Tower. My official time was 23 hours 21 minutes and 32 seconds. Only 16 out of 240 starters made it in under 24 hours without getting on the bus. I'm happy to say I was one of those.

People are more likely to hear me on the commute than see me at the moment, the torrential rain for the whole event, with the associated grit and grime has killed my BB, ergos and brakes!

Tl;dr?

I did it. Under 24 hours, as one of only 6.67% who did.

Many thanks to those who kindly donated, if anyone else would like to my page is open for one more week, the address is in the top post.

Pics here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/leecollierevents/sets/72157630720683684/

Tom

pangolin

Brilliant!!!

tetm

Data:

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/199941556
http://connect.garmin.com/activity/199941535

dhope

Nicely done sir, very impressive

optimisticbiker

Wow, chapeau mightily impressed...

whitebait01

Epic! Good effort!