The bit before

WOMEN V CANCER CYCLE KENYA

GROUP FIVE

18TH – 27TH FEBRUARY 2012

Around January time in 2011 I started to feel a little bit bored with my life. I wanted a challenge, something to look forward to – not just a holiday or a trip, but something that would make a difference, open new doors, new worlds and teach me new things about myself.

I’ve always been a bit of a secret fundraiser geek, particularly for Breast Cancer Care as we lost our beautiful family friend Lil to it when I was still quite young and knew that I wanted to do something for women’s cancer charities, but wasn’t quite sure what.

Around the same time I was feeling this need for this elusive something we lost our grandparents on my dad’s side, who left us some money in their will. It would have been quite easy to splurge, buy a few nice things and have a few rock and roll nights, but I felt like I should do something memorable with it, something that would hopefully make them proud of me and honour their memory.

So, I fired up Google and had a browse, not really knowing what I was even looking for truth be told.

By fluke, chance, fate or otherwise I came across the Action For Charity website. AFC are a successful fundraising event management company and organise a whole range of events all over the world for all different kinds of charities. Throughout the eleven years that they have been running they have raised over £11 million for various well deserving causes.

One of the events running at the time was Women V Cancer Cycle Kenya. The advert read:

Women of all ages are joining together for an incredible fundraising ride through the Rift Valley - from the slopes of majestic Mount Kenya to the shores of magnificent Lake Victoria. Join the team and cycle as a group to cover around 400kms over 5 days, experiencing Africa away from the usual tourist trails. Funds raised by Women V Cancer will be divided equally between three important charities: Breast Cancer Care, Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust and Ovarian Cancer Action and used to support their valuable work.

It will be a journey full of fun, friendship and incredible support as women of all ages and from all walks of life challenge themselves for an amazing cause.

Before I’d even blinked I’d signed up for it. I hadn’t ridden a bike for nearly fourteen years and my fitness levels ranged somewhere between nearly dead and barely living, but yet I knew instantly that this was the challenge I was looking for….and ‘OMG’ what a ride it was!

Getting started

First things first, I decided, I had to get fit. I had been a member at various gyms since leaving high school, always aiming for the tanned, toned look of the likes of Cheryl Cole and Beyonce, dying for a butt so tight you could crack nuts in it, but still sort of resembling a floppier, saggier, squidger kind of Susan Boyle. The days of ambling along on a treadmill, dribbling over Robbie videos on the TV screens had to go.

“It has to be hardcore all the way” I declared, flexing in some seriously unflattering lycra, in the hope that this would instantly convert me into some sort of supercharged fitness freak (instead all it converted was some poor people’s sleep into restless nights peppered with nightmares…sorry about that guys!).

It was then that I embarked upon my first spinning class. Created by Johnathon Goldberg in 1987, spinning is apparently interval training at its very best. A high calorie burning, high-intensity, muscle building, stamina soaring workout on a specially designed stationary bike, and OH MY GOOD GOD it hurts!

After the first class, I tentatively hobbled down to my mom who had been in the swimming pool at the gym, holding my burning lady bits and asked her to check to see if the saddle was still wedged where it shouldn’t be! Sitting down to drive home turned into a military style mission and (because of course, you really want to know this) going to the loo was virtually impossible.

I began to wonder what the hell I had let myself in for. Still, it was too late to turn back now and so, very, very reluctantly I began to go to each and every spin class on offer, even popping along to the spin studio in the week to replicate what the teachers had taught me when the classes weren’t on. For a while me and my bits didn’t get on well, they couldn’t understand why I kept putting them through this torture, but – believe me on this one – eventually everything sort of gets used to it and spin becomes this addictive drug that you want more and more.

I was disgusted with myself the first day that I realised I was actually enjoying exercise!!!

Alongside all this I also tried to get outside and practice on a real live bike, dragging the remains of my old rusty wreck out of the shed to pedal along the canal on. It has to be said that there’s nothing quite as embarrassing as a seventy year old lapping you from Stourbridge to Swindon on foot. It took a long time to get a hang of the gears again (and to remember to breathe when I was pedalling – at least in the spin classes I had the teachers to remind me to do this when I started going blue), and in all honesty, the bike was not the best. Eventually, after one flat tyre too many (and after Halfords informed us that my bike was so old that they didn’t stock the inner tubes for its tyres anymore) my lovely friend Kerri took pity on me and loaned me her brand new bike – thank you Lord!!!

And so, the training was underway.

Fundraising

My next step was to fundraise. The total cost for the whole trip was £2,800 to be split between the three women’s cancer charities and The Farajah Project in Kenya, which offers complimentary therapies to those with cancer during the treatment process.

Unfortunately, timing never particularly being one of my best qualities, I had decided to fundraise during an almighty recession, when people didn’t have enough money to buy food let alone hand over to me. I sat thoughtfully chewing on a BIC biro as I considered this right at the start of my fundraising plan, “Oh Shit,” merrily swirling around in my head.

I needn’t have worried. It appears – and I never realised this before, although I really should have – that I have a good old group of people around me, who love me enough to indulge me in my crazy ideas. My loyal, wonderful, utterly brilliant friends and family dug deep and came to every quiz night, every fun day, every coffee morning, every nineties themed birthday party (BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!!) that I put on. My Just Giving account was flooded by donations from them and my girlies even agreed to pose for a WI style nude calendar to help me raise the dosh. Sadly (or not so sadly, depends who you ask), the calendar never materialised, but the very fact that my friends were willing to do that for me was enough.

My parents were also one hundred and ten percent supportive and helped me out considerably both financially and emotionally. I suspect that sometimes (okay, okay…the majority of the time!!) I really can be a thorn in their sides, but still they were unwavering in their tremendous encouragement and assistance.

I can never thank the people that supported me enough. It seems that it would take me a thousand years to repay their kindness, but if that’s what it takes I will do it. I appreciate these people more than they will ever, ever know, each and every one of them.

I realised during the year that I spent fundraising, that if I didn’t get anything else from the challenge, I had been shown just what amazing people I am lucky enough to have in my life and I love them all so much.

Ooh look at me ….. “totes emosh!!”

With very little time to spare, I reached the target amount just before the deadline and, as I received the final bits of paperwork and started to pack – just don’t talk to me about packing!!! – I suddenly realised that this was it…. This was really going to happen.