If you told me a year ago that I would aim to cycle 800Kms in one go, I would have laughed at you. My brother and I once spoke about cycling from Johannesburg to Capetown (+/- 1500Kms) to raise funds for Family Restoration Services, but in the same conversation we decided that it's madness and we wouldn't be able to do it. Now I'm aiming to cycle 800Kms on my own sometime within the next 3 months.
If you told me a year ago that the 800Kms was going to be a practice run for a 4,000Km cycle partially through a desert, I would have forcefully escorted you to the nearest psychiatric ward. To me, these distances are crazy! Our family has never been big on sport or exercise, so even the fact that I am now able to cycle 110Kms in one day blows my mind.

However... yesterday I finally paged through the cycling magazine that fireweb lent me and the frontpage article is about a guy named Chris Roach, who's cycling around the world for charity! Around the world!! 78,000Kms that they expect could take him up to 8 years to complete. Now that is crazy!!! He's aiming to raise $100,000 for Oxfam. Man, wish I could meet somebody like that to raise some funds for Thamsanqa!! Wish I had permanent residence in Australia and the financial means to take on something like that myself!

I'm hoping to get some sponsors even for the 800Km ride up to Brisbane this year. But when you compare 800Kms to someone doing 78,000Kms you feel kinda inadequate. Don't get me wrong, I'm not feeling despondent. In fact, I'm feeling quite inspired, but I AM realizing that I'll have to pull up my socks.

The article that fireweb directed me to was about a 68 year old man who cycled from Perth to Sydney, the route that I want to do. He managed to do 3,000 of the 4,000 Kms and he had 2 people in a car with him for support. But he's 68 years old!! I'm 3 years over half his age and there's not much chance of me doing that trip right now. Again, more inspiration for me to pull up my socks!!