What a memorable day. We had our largest peloton (18 riders) which included 2 outstanding sportsmen from past and present – Steve Waugh (Laureus Academy member) and Butch James (Friend & Ambassador). Both are top guys and I’m grateful to them for supporting us on the fifth stage of the ride.
The route from Oxford to Newbury took us through some awesome scenery and over a few mean hills. There is quite a range of standard among the riders but everyone has been supporting eachother and working as a team to get the pack over the top of the tough climbs. As someone who competed alone back in the day, it’s a good learning experience to watch team sportsmen like Steve Waugh, Butch James and Hugo Porta show their leadership skills on the ride. This really fits in nicely with the theme of the campaign and I was proud to take them to the Nacro project at the Riverside Youth and Community Centre near Newbury.
I’m getting quite tired now but every time we arrive at a project, it gives me a real boost and revs me up for the next day of riding. Tomorrow will be a long day – leaving the Vodafone HQ in Newbury for a 70 mile journey to Brent.
You can view photos from every day of the event on our flickr page:
As you’ll see, Streetgames is a wonderful project and the visit was an uplifting experience for everyone involved.
Enjoy…
After yesterday’s ride we went to Stoke-on-Trent’s young persons community project, Streetgames. There were loads of really enthusiastic kids, all doing their best to beat me on the cycle challenge (this involves two laps of a circuit on a static bike). I’m afraid to say that two or three of them did get the better of me and I was given a lot of stick. It was a great project and really backed up what has been written in the report, Laureus: Breaking the Cycle of Violence - Click here to read it.
I’m also delighted that Jed Mason, who joined us on yesterday’s leg, presented a cheque for £1000 to the Laureus Sport for Good Foundation. He has also pledged a further £1000 on completion of the ride, which is extremely generous and has given me even more motivation (not that I needed any!).
Today we had an even tougher route over some pretty serious hills but I’m feeling good and slowly starting to get used to that saddle. Halfway through the ride we were joined by the Laureus Head of Communications, Mal Thompson (no relation!), but his timing couldn’t have been worse - he started at the bottom of a 2 mile hill. Mal dropped back about halfway up, leaving the rest of us to wait at the top with big grins on our faces. By the time he arrived we were bombarded with excuses about the saddle, gears, handlebars and all sorts of other strange problems. To give Mal some credit, he started to motor ahead after that but there’ll be a few charity fines for him this evening.
Later this afternoon we’re visiting the Sporting Futures project just outside Coventry.
