LEJOG is one of those bucket list things for many cyclists, myself included. The idea of cycling from one end of the country to another has a strange allure considering how hard it is. I’d looked at it before but it had never got off the ground. The Deloitte version, taking just 9 days, always seemed a bit too much of a stretch but a supported, 14 day event seemed manageable.

In early May I’d thought about riding LEJOG with Pedal Britain starting in June 2022 but after talking to various people, including the people that run the ride, friends and other cyclists I decided to try it next year. Then I rode the Etape Caledonia on 15th May, finished it feeling really good and without having really struggled on the climbs and suddenly it felt like it might be doable sooner. Then a space came up on the ride in July 2022; that gave me 8 weeks to get ready rather than 5.

I spoke to the coach associated with Pedal Britain and he thought I just needed to sharpen up as my fitness sounded like it was ok. That was that then, I booked the last space and waited to hear if I was in. The next morning I had an invoice waiting in my email. My first reaction was “fuuuccckkkkk, what have I done?”

Next thing was to book travel insurance (just in case anything went wrong before the start) and then signed up with Grant Goodman, the coach. His first request, not surprisingly, was to get me to do an FTP test. This is a horrible thing to do, after a pretty hard warm up it’s about going as hard as you can for 20 minutes. The first 10 minutes feel hard, the next 5 minutes hurt and you spend the last 5 minutes just wanting it to end. The good news was that my FTP was the highest it’s ever been, that’s a good starting point. Grant went to work building a training plan to have me ready in 8 weeks.