Gavin's July cycling challenge

As many of you will know, I have a big week or so of cycling coming up: Riding London-Paris on the 19th-21st July (arriving on the Champs Elysee the day before the Tour de France), followed by racing Ride London 100 on the 30th July. Both big challenges, but the last 6 months of training plans should get me through (& justify the 5am starts).

My main motivation for this has been pretty selfish: I wanted to ride these events, but I do have a slightly deeper motivation. As some of you may know, both my parents have life-limiting lung conditions, so with my genetic inheritance I need to make sure I do everything to keep my lungs working well. The British Lung Foundation have been a great help to both of my parents, helping them cope with their conditions & working towards better options for disease treatment and management. As someone who's spent half their life developing drugs, I know the value that patient organizations have, both in enabling research/ development, but also in day to day support for scared & vulnerable patients. In the same way I've benefited from focused training plans, both my parents have benefited from focused exercise classes to help them manage their diseases, supported by the BLF.

I'd like to use this challenge to try & put something back to the BLF & raise some money & awareness for them. I've funded the events, so anything you can give would go straight to the charity. I've set up a fundraising page with Everyclick, if you'd like to make a donation to help the great work they do.

Gavin

Link below to BLF pages (with blog by my mum): ww.blf.org.uk/your-stories/9-things-people-with-lung-disease-want-you-to-know

and the two events I'm doing:
hotchillee.com/event/the-london-paris/
prudentialridelondon.co.uk/events/100/