0 Phil's 300/30 Challenge!

Often a times, you get fed up of seeing the pros mechanically climbing the same mountains every other year, as you sit glued to your t.v sets somewhere on an opposite side of the world. We don't get to have any real data that matters most.

The privileged few who can find that kind of travel money will find themselves riding up the famous Cols of the Tour de France. Everyday individuals like us hold it a dream. We read books and other first hand personal accounts of these feats to get a feel for what difficulty and sense of achievement they hold.

And then I found this webpage. It is about an ordinary individual, Phil Deeker, a pyrotechnician from U.K who set out in July to climb 300 cols (French for mountains) on his bike in 30 days!!! Thats an average of 10 huge climbs per day. As humbling to us as it sounds, its an amazing initiative. His daily accounts are all featured on his blog, and the nice thing about it is, he is very frank about the rides and the difficulty involved. There's plenty of handy information in first person accounts like gradients, calories burnt, brutal weather, time spent on bike and his average speed up the most famous of the Tour's climbs. Every climber's dream!

He was sponsored by MAG (Mines Advisory Group), a leading humanitarian organisation and from contributions from hundreds of people. His epic 800 km a week journey aimed to support and bring awareness to the victims of conflict afflicted countries all over the world.

Here's a favorite excerpt of mine :

"So, The DAY WITH THE GIANTS is done and I feel OK, if a bit tired! Actually
this evening it was a struggle to eat because I was so exhausted. I knew
it was going to be one of the hardest days, but it’s built my confidence rather
than broken it. I stayed in my ‘comfort zones’ all day despite all : in other
words I never pushed my heart, lungs and legs into pain and never had any lactic
acid build-up in the muscles. One part of my body though that was definitely way
out of the comfort zone was my bum! The painful and inevitable process of
shedding Man Skin and growing 2 patches of Crocodile skin in its place has
begun. Thank you Sarah and Rupert for the cream and thank you Neals Yard for
yours too as well as for your specially made vitamin pills – hope they speed up
the croc skin process. ( Don’t know what’s in those pills, but I feel pretty
good on them so far!!!!!)"

Enough said, keep reading this grand adventure over a cup of tea! SOURCE