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On Friday 27th June 2014, starting a 7:00 am!, I and a bunch of friends will be taking part in the annual 103 mile sponsored cycle ride from Wolverhampton to Aberdovey (a seaside town on the Welsh coast) along with over 500 other riders.  The event is organised by members of the West Midlands Police and has run every year since 1993 and raised over £100,000 for local charities. Riders start 'en mass' from Molineux Football Ground, Wolverhampton , under escort until the route turns to quieter country roads. The whole ride is then supported by travelling motorcycle marshals provided from Wolverhampton's Police Motorcycle Club. There are checkpoints roughly 15 miles apart, which provide Riders with food, drink and positive encouragement! There are also sweep vehicles and mini buses available should Riders not make it for one reason or another.

This is my first time riding in the event and to be honest I've not really prepared very well;

Whilst I've done quite a bit of mountain biking over the last 5 or 6 years, I've not been on a road bike for over 30 years and due to being very busy with work I only got round to buying a road bike last Saturday, less than a week before the ride - so not much time for practice!! There are two big differences between a mountain bike and a road bike: a mountain bike has suspension and big tyres, a road bike has no suspension and tiny rock hard tyres. So a road bike takes some getting used to both in how it rides and the pain it can inflict on ones backside!!

The longest ride I'd done in one day before this week was about 25 miles!!

I have managed to do just 3 practice rides on my new bike; 14 miles on Sunday (twice around the Shenstone Fun Run circuit), 36 miles on Monday evening (a circuit starting in Shenstone and taking in some beautiful countryside and villages in south Staffordshire) and 25 miles on Tuesday evening (a circuit starting in Henley-in-Arden and taking in some beautiful countryside and villages around Stratford). I would like to have done another ride on Wednesday, but my backside was and still is so bruised that I thought it better to leave it and hope that over the following 36 hours it might recover and not be too sore for the big day on Friday!!

One of the prerequisites of taking part in the ride is that I have to raise at least £75 for one of the events preferred charities. I have decided to support MacMillan Cancer Support because cancer is something that affects a great number of people and without the money raised by this kind of event they couldn't continue to provide the much needed help and support that they do for those affected by the disease. 

In return for putting in the effort to ride the 103 miles and suffer the sore backside I hope to raise £1,000 for MacMillan Cancer Support. 

So if you've read this far I hope that you will follow the instructions below to show your support...

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Thanks for reading and for sponsoring me.

Regards,
Andy Evans