who I am
My name is Pete, I am a 32 year old Maths Teacher form Skipton, North Yorkshire. I have been cycling 5 years but I have been an enthusiastic sportsman since I was 15. This followed a protracted spell of being the ‘last boy to be picked’ for football, rugby and cricket teams at school (at least the fat boys were a good tactical choice in goal but I was neither use nor ornament). At 15 I was fortunate enough to meet Andy Parry – a coach who became (and still is) a good friend and who showed me that not all sports involve ritual humiliation. He coached me as a kayaker and after years of support I raced for the Great Britain Team at three World Championships.
I moved to Yorkshire in 2006 after loosing focus on serious training and competition and almost by default took up the range of sports that are so easy to access here – cycling, fell running, triathlon and occasional canoeing. Fell running was an unwelcome return to sporting ineptitude and I found myself getting not just beaten but roundly thrashed by women, children and old age pensioners. But the medicine worked well and though I never achieved highly in running, I did remember what it is like to suffer. Anybody who has run the Wasdale horseshoe fell race (21 miles and 9,000’ ascent) will agree.
Cycling seemed to be something that came much easier – being the wrong side of 80kg means that a sport which involves sitting down is always going to be preferable. I took up cyclocross and road cycling and have ridden my bike regularly since. The highlight of all of this has been 36th place in the Three Peaks cyclocross (which is supposed to be the hardest cyclocross race in the world – 40 miles and 6000ft of climbing). For those of you not familiar with cyclocross, it involves an off road course ridden on what is essentially a road bike with fat tyres – no suspension and drop handlebars. At points in the course when the terrain is too steep or rough, bikes are shouldered and ran with – for the Three Peaks this is around 6km. As you can probably imagine, suffering is also a significant component in cyclocross.
I have cycle toured in Europe and America before. The first was a rather painful thousand or so miles on a bike that cost £15 and a pair of shorts whose cost I cannot remember but whose value was too small to be measured and which served only to preserve modesty. The last 99% of the trip was ridden out of the saddle for reasons of comfort, and lessons were learned about the value of good quality Assos shorts. Again, suffering featured prominently on this trip. The last time I cycle toured was in 2006 and was a fairly random 4000 mile route in the USA that took in the best of the west coast, a bit of hitch hiking with the bike and then a mad dash of 450 miles in 3 days to JFK airport. A fantastic trip, but there was something missing……
The plan this summer was to be a little more focussed and set out with a particular (particularly long and hard) route in mind and to promote it as a charitable event. The planned route takes in some of the best scenery in the world and some of the most challenging cycling. The route takes in several climbs to over 10,000 feet, the windswept Midwest and the sweltering heat of the deep south.
