This time in 13 weeks...

At the risk of frightening small children - it's too late to look away now - I am making good on my promise to post this picture of my post-work-out 'look':

I'm giving away bonus points to anyone who can explain the reason why only my face turns bright pink. It's a bizarre phemomenon if I do say so myself!
Just to re-cap on why I would even dream of putting this online, in my last post I set a fundraising target of £100 by 21st April, the day of the London marathon, and I'm really happy to say that this goal was not only achieved but exceeded - THANK YOU SOOOOOOOO MUCH to those of you who have donated thus far. Your generosity is keeping me well on the road to RideLondon100 in August. For anyone who is intending to support me, you can do your good deed right here. Even better - for every donation I receive over the summer (starting now) I will get entered into a draw to win an additional £500 donation for my charity, Mind.

I've got a long way to go before I can feel confident that I'm going to make it round the 100 mile course on the day, but I've been sticking to my training plan and I'm on schedule to get there in the next 3 months :-) In fact, my training plan for this ride and my desire to reach this goal has been the major thing that has kept me going through a really tough winter. I experience the effects of S.A.D every year, but this year it seemed to go on forever and, unfortunately, evolved into a depressive episode that had me signed off work for 4 weeks. Some days I couldn't even muster enough energy to get dressed, let alone go outside, but having my little foldaway static bike set up in the living room meant I could do a cyling session without it seeming like a huge chore - those days were the good days.

Thankfully I'm now back at work and feeling almost normal - hooray for the reappearance of Mr Sunshine! I hope everyone is enjoying the beautiful weather this Bank Holiday weekend. It's fair to say I'm something of a fair weather cyclist and today was just perfect for a jaunt around Richmond Park. Happily, a slight adjustment to my saddle height seems to have corrected my tendency to fall off at traffic lights, and I didn't get chased by a single man's best friend - success!

Don't forget, if you're on facebook you can show your support by clicking 'Join' on the event I created here. I have no expectations of people actually turning up on the day, but just knowing you're behind me makes every training session that little bit easier ;-)

Thanks for reading!
C x