Thursday – Day minus 1 – London -> Dover

20km ridden

  

Went to work on the Thursday – I was useless.  Everyone else was just normal – I had a severe case of butterflies / ‘do you know wtf I am about to do’ going on.  I needed a new USB battery so picked one up from PC World at lunch, and promptly left it at work – doh

Set my out of office on, and sent the following email as my parting shot:-

As you may or may not be aware, I am off on a little bike race – Its called theTranscontinental Race No3

It starts in Flanders, Belgium on Friday night, and finishes in Istanbul 14 days later.
That’s 4300k in 14 days, (and 40,000m of climbing). There are about 200 other stupid people doing this. 

That’s 330k a day – unfortunately my longest ride this ever is 285k. I will be riding at least 12-14hrs every day. 
Oh my god.

Its also totally unsupported, (I find my own food and accommodation, or sleep behind a bush), and I have to ride solo, (no tour de france peleton for me to follow).

Am I ready – errrr no.

You can follow my progress here – http://trackleaders.com/transconrace15 
I will be rider 52, once the riders are loaded into the panel on the right. 
We will all be carrying satellite trackers that update our position every 5 minutes. You can even offer words of encouragement, (but no help please)

The race will be reported here - http://www.transcontinental.cc/, http://reportage.transcontinentalrace.com/?page_id=99

I will update facebook / the transcontinental (english) group (https://www.facebook.com/groups/Transcontinental.en/) if I find any wifi in Albania, and if I can still think

A rubbish blog detailing my lack of training is here https://orangecannonim.wordpress.com/

I may never be the same again

Eventually I bailed a little early, and headed home, got changed into my cycle kit and headed for Stratford station.

A bike full of luggage felt very strange.  I jumped on a train to Dover, feeling very weird as a TCR prep’d bike does not look normal.

Rode to a pre booked b&b, then a bit more to get some cash, and then a bit more to pick up a small Chinese meal.
Phoned the missus, watched crap TV and an early night