It begins!!!!

Training has started - But what for??

As some of you may know, Matt and I have decided to cycle the London Ride 100, a stupidly long (100 miles - hence the name) bicycle race that goes through the Surrey countryside and ends up with us finishing down the Mall in central London. Wonderful I hear you say, well I hope so, and I hope we raise lots of awareness and money for the WWF (World Wildlife Fund - not the Wrestling)

So this is the first blog on what is going to be a fairly specific thing - Matt and I (Ali) getting fitter, faster and arguably sorer in the nether regions - all in aid of a good cause - the possibility of cuddling a Panda, wait, I mean raising awareness and money for arguably a fantastic cause. I say arguably, some of you out there aren't animal lovers.

There will be times where we are grumpy, cold (already happened), shed tears and blood, hopefully not too much/ at all. But we really want this to be something that people get follow and behind us, whilst we ramp up the training, the time and effort, all too finally compete and do well in a bicycle race. I'm sure the journey is going to be interesting so i'll try and blog it all with pictures.

So after all that - the first training ride. It's been a horrible winter and most of us have been in hibernation - I went abroad and followed the sun. Matt has by watching him zoom off into the distance on our first ride, been on his turbo-trainer (a bike version of the treadmill) and has become super fast so there is a lot of catching up to do.

Anyway, I Strava'd it all and it was a horrible, extremely cold morning out on Saturday, 14th March 2015. I'm sure I'll find out a way to just save it as a picture but if you are interested, this is what we did. Please use the link below.

Our first training ride!!!!

You'll see that it wasn't entirely quick but some highlights were not knowing where we were for 100% of the ride, bypassing a load of school children on their Duke of Edinburgh Awards walk and after we took a wrong turn, Matt having to keep me focused i.e. not allowing me to see some local English Heritage sites (I do love a good castle) and the half hour drive home still absolutely frozen.

But it's a start and hopefully it'll only get better.

Anyway, that's enough for now.

Ali out!

P.s if you would like to donate to our charity page, please follow the link:
www.virginmoneygiving.com/team/MAliPandamonium