The Idea

So where I hear you ask did we get this mad idea from. Well like all the best ideas it came up in the pub after a couple of Saturday afternoon shandies.

A trip up to Manchester to visit Gerald in mid-January very nearly didn't happen. The weather had been at it's snowy best throughout the start of the year and the thaw had only begun a couple of days earlier. So once the AA had sorted out my flat battery, I motored on up to Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

The Marble Beer House, Chorlton provided us with a suitable venue to chill out on this cool Saturday afternoon with good company and Jeff Stelling & co on the telly in the background. I'm slightly hazy on how we got onto this topic, but I suspect it was something to do with challenges for the new year and looking to do something new. I had run the Leamington 10k in 2009 with Ray which was actually quite good fun but I'd got nothing lined up for 2010. Jeavons outlined his plans to run the Manchester 10k in May 2010 to which I believe I said I'd take part in (but later reneged on). I wanted to do something very different and much more ambitious. More so than simply running say a marathon.

The mind-altering properties of the Marble Ginger Beer encouraged me to suggest cycling Lands' End to John O'Groats (LEJOG) - one of UK cycling's greatest journeys. It was something I had looked into 10 years ago not long after I had just started University but nothing ever came out of it - other than my copy of 'Cycling Britain'. I've always been pretty keen on cycling - though largely as a spectator.

The suggestion seemed to go down pretty well with Jeavons, and a subsequent text to Ray had a very committed response. So that was that!

Nothing more was said about it for a little while. Things went quiet as we were all busy with work / holidays / life in general etc. Reflecting on it later in a state of sobriety I wasn't so convinced that we would actually go through with it - given the amount of prep and training that would no doubt be required for such an epic adventure..

As we approached the end of March a couple of e-mails between us discussed whether we were actually going to do this. We were all keen on doing it, but did discuss whether we ought to aim at doing it in 2011 to give us a little more preparation time. But my feeling was that if we were ever going to do it - then it ought to be now. It gets more difficult to find the time to do something as ambitious as this, and so now was a good a time as any.

I knew that once we had bought our new bikes there was no going back........