Self-confessed couch potato Dominic Utton is not a Lycra man. So how will he cope with swapping the sofa for the saddle and devoting a month of his life to Cancer Research UK’s Cycle 300 challenge? We track his progress from 0 to 300
Let’s get one thing straight: I am no serious cyclist. I have a bike, of course (I live in Oxford – everyone here has a bike), but it’s a bottom of the range, bog-standard mountain bike and I only ever use it to wobble to the shop and back. Also, the gears have been stuck on the lowest setting since last summer, which makes even that 10-minute ride look slightly ridiculous.
So when someone suggested I take part in Cycle 300 this year, attempting to clock up 300 miles in a month in aid of Cancer Research UK, my first reaction was to laugh. But once I stopped laughing, I thought: “Why not?” Just so long as I don’t have to wear any Lycra. I’ve made a fair few embarrassing middle-aged-dad decisions in recent years, but I draw the line at Lycra.
What the hell. I’ll give it a go.
First things first: get the bike sorted. Luckily my street has an excellent cycle shop on the corner, so I booked in and finally got the gears fixed. Next: formulate a proper strategy.
My plan – as someone with basically couch-potato levels of fitness – is twofold. First: I’m not going to do 10 miles a day right out of the gate. Let’s get real. Instead, I’m going for 50 miles in week one, 75 in week two, and 88 for the two following that. Will this be realistic? Who knows? It looks OK right now.
Second: to start with I’m going to stick to cycling along towpaths. I live close to both the Thames and the Oxford canal, and not only do they offer pretty views, but (and this is the really cunning part), towpaths are by their very nature, flat. Water does not flow uphill – therefore, I will not need to cycle uphill.
Is this cheating? Of course not! I’m going to try to ride 300 miles in one month, for crying out loud. At least let me try to tilt the odds a little in my favour.
Week one
Target: 50 miles
Achieved: 52 miles
Remaining: 248 miles
Right, here we go. There’s a World Cup on and Britain is in the middle of a heatwave … ideal conditions for a man in his mid-40s to attempt a gruelling physical challenge, right? With that in mind I take it easy for my first ride – a picturesque six-mile round trip along the Thames from my house in west Oxford, past Christ Church meadow to a pub called the Isis Farmhouse, on Iffley lock to the east of the city.
And guess what? I don’t know if it’s because my bike was fresh from a service or whether I’m not quite as unfit as I feared, but when I got back I felt fine. Better than fine: I felt great. So great that I sailed right past my house and continued another couple of miles in the other direction to a pub/restaurant called the Fishes … and my six miles became eight.
The next day I repeat the trick, and over the week not only push farther east along the Thames but also follow the river in the opposite direction, as well as striking up north along the Oxford canal past the village of Wolvercote and into the wilds of Oxfordshire.
By Friday I’m aching, but it’s a good ache – and when I tot up my total on Sunday I’m a couple miles over what I aimed for, which feels even better. Of course, next week will be 25 miles tougher, and the weeks after that worse still, but for the moment I’m winning.
If you’re tempted by life on two wheels, why not make it count? Sign up to Cancer Research UK’s Cycle 300 challenge and cycle 300 miles over the course of September to raise money for life-saving research. Whether you cycle the distance all in one go, over a weekend or throughout the month, every penny you raise will help beat cancer. Find out more and sign up here
