It's for charadee

A friend of mine is undertaking a trial by exercise in June this year to raise money for a children's charity.  It's a worthy cause.  And just as well too because what he's proposing to do boggles the brain.  He is cycling from London to Paris in twenty-four (count 'em) hours.

It's 280 miles all in, and in a sadistic piece of scheduling par excellence by the organisers, the first tranche covers the 100 miles down to the coast to catch the ferry, leaving 180 French miles to be covered in one go on the final leg.

My friend is a relative novice in matters cycling if his blog is anything to go by.  This is just as well.  Anyone who's done any distance cycling at all remembers the first one well.  You set off with the best of intentions, full of vim and anguished anticipation.  Five hours later you're in a dark place.  No matter how diligently you eat and drink or how well you pace your effort, the horrors seep in.

It starts with seemingly inexplicable extremes of mood and physical discomfort.  For no apparent reason, you'll suddenly feel nauseous and tearful.  Moments later you find yourself singing to the hedgerows as the spirit soars.

The secret is to be aware of these peaks and troughs and what causes them.  The body is trying to protect itself from your idiocy - and quite right too.  If you have an iron enough will, it is more than possible to kill yourself on a bicycle.  Because the machine supports the rider's weight, there is no "wall" that simply stops you in your tracks when the tank hits empty, as is the case with runners.  You need, therefore, to detach yourself from your emotions.  Acknowledge them, yes, but do be fooled into thinking you must do as they implore.  It's important in (near) extemis to reassure the body that you know what you're doing, and that you will allow it stand down ante mortem.

This is the kind of caper James Bond used to get up to when he was being imaginatively tortured inside a hollowed-out volcano in Fleming's books.  He used to have a mental cell that he would retreat to to ride out the physical maelstrom.  It's easier said than done though...particularly when the leather saddle you're sat atop turns out not to have been sufficiently broken in after twenty minutes' cycling, as happened on my last marathon undertaking.  I couldn't sit down for a calendar month after that one.  I had to pretend to colleagues and friends that I'd given up sitting for Lent.  I'd actually given up castor sugar.

...still, what doesn't kill us and all that.