Hi all,

We have all been training for a little while now and are starting to break a bit. The thing is London-Edinburgh-London (LEL from here on in) is the sort of event that experienced cyclists (audaxers, apparently) spend years preparing themselves for. Trying to turn your body from that of someone who sort of pootles about a bit on a bike into that of a hardened endurance athlete in under a year is a bit of a stretch, to put it mildly.

Once you start to edge above 100 mile rides into the 120-200 mile a day category, equipment that was perfectly useable before begins to do horrific things to your body (I have pictures), snaps or just doesn't work any more. Bits of your body you didn't know existed (ITB band anyone?) start to inflict crippling pain upon you.

We are, therefore, in the rehab phase of our training, as my fellow LEL campaigner Phil put it. Or the 'preparing the excuses for when you fail' stage as our dastardly mate Glenn put it. New exercises to lengthen bits that have got too short, or press on bits that have got too tired, new bits of equipment that cause almost as much pain to get used to as they are supposed to save in the long run (you can google breaking in a brooks, but just don't look for images). My own rides have got shorter in recent weeks, but I am trying to focus on doing multi-day rides with exercises at the end to recover. Working out to deal with all this pain now should actually help prepare us for the 5 day torment that awaits us in 30/07.....

This hopefully goes some way to show that we are getting a good bit of suffering in for the money that you've kindly sponsored us. I don't want to over-dramatise it though. At the end of the day I have a really close mate who has been stuck in a hospital bed for nearly 18 months now. And ultimately, as determined as we are to complete this thing, we all have the choice to back out, whenever we want (despite the ignominy we will face from Glenn).

One of the hardest thing about Matty's situation is that the capacity to make choices has been taken away from him for now. Where he goes, what he wears, who he has to talk to - it all gets decided for him. This must create situations of frustration and despair that I think it's difficult to properly imagine without 'being in the bed'. A group of us took Matty to the pub the other day, which was lovely - but when was it time to leave? It was such an unspoken awkwardness, as we were there for Matty but had to decide for him when we'd had enough. Horrible.

And yet, things do seem to be changing for Matty, with the therapeutic supports you have helped to fund. One of the nurses heard him say 'yes' a couple of weeks ago, when she asked if he wanted his medication. These conscious responses are not consistent, but they are at least present now, over a year since he had his accident. Yet again, Matty is showing his determination, his will to live and his capacity to improve. Thanks so much for all the help you've given in helping him to carry on.