Alarm goes at 5am, and have to admit that I am already awake, as the nerves have kicked in....

We packed and loaded the bikes onto the back of the car to head down to Hampton Court for the start of the race. Mick (my brother in law) and I were fairly quiet in the car, Mick because he kept packing and unpacking his bags, something he did not stop doing until we arrived in Paris.

Hampton Court was heaving, and heaving with very fit looking cyclists who all looked confident, thin and ok in lycra.....

It is weird when you are walking into another sport, you know you are not good at it and you know that they all know you are not good at it....and to be honest I was bloody bloody nervous!

Mike and Ian were there, the other members of our team, plus the other 350 plus riders. We had received an email from the charity, Right to PLay, the day before saying that our fund raising of £42,000 would put 1500 kids through their programmes for a year, so great timing and we did mention it to each other a few times as our arses got worse and worse!

It was an amazing experience, not neccessarily a completely enjoyable one, but it was tough and bloody hard at times with the temperatures at 35+ on the road for eight hours at a go.

There was a hill outside Dover that was just brutal, it was just not funny, and I psyched myself out before it even started resulting in the worst cramps that I have ever had! In my quads, both, then my hamstrings, then my hip-flexors and calfs! All at once! I was kneeling by the side of the road leaning on my bike - the other riders must have thought that I was praying before taking on the hill...! Not if they had heard my language.....

The best part of day one was the Burger King was had before getting on the ferry! Bloody lovely! Burger, chips and coke, the food of champions.....

Day two was the toughest, rolling hill after rolling hill, interspersed with bloody long hills! One of the guys I was cycling next to summed it up perfectly 'F***ing hell, if we were in a car, we would be looking out saying what beautiful countryside, look at the lovely rolling hills... and all I can think of is f**k the rolling hills, I hate the f**king rolling hills' Had me laughing for quite a few miles.

Once you started day 3 you knew that it was nearly over, and although we had to complete 80 miles before lunch, once there we knew that we could smell Paris......or our guts were in a bad way.One of the ladies was shaking so badly at lunch she could not hold her bottle of water to drink. The shaking hands did provoke the inevitable jokes.....what a waste and all that..........luckily after a few litres she was ok to finish.

We rode in as one huge group of 350 into Paris, with the 25 odd outriders blocking off all the junctions etc. So we cycled up a deserted Champs Elysees - which was awesome. Shame I was too bloody knackered to take it all in.....

So after about 330 miles in three days, we finished. Standing around outside the hotel, in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower it was hard to believe we did not have to wash out our bike bottles, get the powders etc ready for the next day, get the power bars into the tops, gels, jelly babies etc etc. We could stop and relax..............

It was a great feeling, so we got pissed.......which was very sensible when we were no doubt dehydrated anyway! But it was a good end to a pretty intense three days.

So apologies for my absence on here, a huge huge thanks to those that sponsored me and here's to being able to sit unaided in a few weeks............haha