Day 3

The big one. 100 miles on the bike from Bernay all the way to the Arc De Triomphe in Paris. The build-up to each day was a nervous experience as you had no real idea what lay ahead in terms of climbs and weather conditions. Because this one was so long and everybody could feel the effects of two long days in the saddle, the nerves today were particularly acute.

In order to try and get everyone to the Arc reasonably closely together, the four teams staggered their starts in half hour intervals, meaning those of us in the leading pack weren't setting off till 9am. As my room-mate was in Team 4 however, any nice lie-in was curtailed due to the alarm going off at 6am!

This of course set us an interesting challenge. Could we reach the Arc first, despite setting off a whole 90 minutes after the opening group? I'm sure this was in all of our minds as our now perfectly engineered peloton sped off at a blistering pace. With the wind blowing in our favour and a relatively flat stage promised, we were cruising along
at speeds well in excess of 20mph. We knocked off the first 25 mile stage in amazing time. When we reached the rest stop, both teams 2 and 3 were still there, much to our delight. By the time we pushed through the 2nd 29 mile stage, we'd passed everyone.

We were making such good progress, we were ordered to find a local bar to keep warm and kill time. Half way through the final day and we all just wanted to push on but we understood the need to respect the wishes of the charity we were riding for.

The final half of the day was chopped up into 3 smaller sections which we continued to blast through . By now we were so far ahead, there was no way we'd all be able to celebrate together. Some of the other groups had also suffered puncture delays, something we'd managed to avoid all weekend.

As the final 30 or so miles started to tick away, the quick pace and the unprecedented number of miles started to take its toll on me mentally and physically, culminating in a full-on sugar crash on a short but steep climp coming out of Versailles. Stuffing peanut brittle and jelly beans in my mouth and taking long swigs of energy drink, we moved towards the final goal.

We stopped again just on the outskirts of Paris to allow the closest group a chance to catch us. This time however, tea and cake was replaced by Kronenbourg as the refreshment of choice. After around 45 minutes, we got news that the 2nd group were approaching, so we got back on the bikes and rode as a large team down into Paris itself, through the park (Bois de Boulogne) and up towards the Arc itself.

The final and not inconsiderable challenge was getting around the Arc itself in one piece. This is a crazy piece of road. No markings whatsoever and vehicles appear to have right of way from all entrances.

Amid a chorus of cheers and airhorns we were soaked with bubbly as we finally reached the final checkpoint. Celebrations continued unabaited from that moment on and the sun was up before I finally lay my head down this morning.

This was an amazing weekend and I met some truly great people along the way. Sitting here now, back in Blighty all feels a bit miserable in comparison.

They told us at the briefing before the ride that a large proportion of people who do one ride for the charity, sign up for a 2nd the following year. I seriously doubted that at the close of Day 1. Sitting here now, I think they might just be on to something.