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100 Day Challenge – Exercise every day for 100 days til Christmas
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Posted 4 years ago
Last night’s exercise was grim – we’d come back from a weekend away, after a four and a half hour drive, arriving back at 8.30 and I was planning on having tea then going out while my wife had a shower. She decided she wanted to shower then have tea so I trudged off on the bike in the cold and the dark on a very empty stomach. And it was fine. Then today I’ve done 30 miles on the gravel bike to kick the week off and it was lovely and sunny and a little chilly and autumnal.
Monkeycmonkeydo – you time your request for more information about Chris well. The challenge got a bit more serious for me on Friday as we entered the Strathpuffer again, so this is now training. 24 hours round a wood in January north of Inverness. Previously when I’ve done this it’s been to raise money for Mountain Rescue. Over the years we’ve raised £30,000 for Glencoe Mountain Rescue team – they were the team that recovered Chris after the avalanche.
Chris and I went to uni together. In my first year he got me into racing short course events, then we entered what became the Puffer Lite as a pair on a bit of a whim. We won it and over the next three years we raced together and won medals at 10 Under the Ben, 10 At Kirroughtree, Relentless and we also won the first Hit the North.
Chris was very kind and welcoming, with a very deadpan sense of humour. He was the first of my friends I told about my wife and I getting engaged, and my wife has always said he should have been an usher or my best man at our wedding. He was exceptionally smart, going on from his MSc in maths to a PhD in ocean currents at the Scottish Association for Marine Science in Oban. As I got fat and slow after I graduated he got fitter and faster, competing in the Celtman triathlon (202k bike, 3.2k swim and 42k run over two munros) and getting a bit cheesed off with me when we finished 7th at 10 at Kirroughtree! Chris started this challenge and was so humble that I didn’t even hear about it until after his death. He devoted a lot of his life to training – I remember turbo training sessions in his uni bedroom with two people blasting away on a turbo each with another two club members yelling encouragement, timing and pointing desk fans at them. He threw just as much effort into partying and having a good time though – I remember destroying a set of speakers at one of his house parties, for which he has a special coloured lightbulb. He was also amazing at gnadgery switchbacks and one handed wheelies.
Chris, who was from Lancashire, loved being in the Highlands. He died one week before the 2013 Strathpuffer in an avalanche in Glencoe. He was showing around a group of four friends on a popular and well known route and they got unlucky. He was 24. It left our group of cycling friends devastated, although his funeral turned into a big fun party. Along with Chris, three of the party also died.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-21115428
The response from STW at the time was incredible.
Which brings me round to this year’s Puffer. I’ve done it three times in memory of Chris to raise money for Glencoe MRT but this year we’re raising money for a different cause. The wife of one my team mates died recently and he’s asked that we raise some money for St Michael’s Hospice who cared for her. If anyone has a few quid spare then please feel free to chuck something in the kitty.
[url=https://flic.kr/p/2ho4zAu]622812_10100362921115340_2321260_o[/url] by Luke Bradley, on Flickr
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