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themamil · 7 years

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London to Paris in 24 Hours

London to Paris. 24 hours. It’s been on my bucket list ever since I rode from Manchester to London in 24 hours in 2013. Since then I’ve been considering how I might do London 2 Paris in 24 hours.

The small details of the English Channel, foreign lands and unknowns have always added an extra edge and complexity to the contemplation of doing this ride. It’s not so easy to be recovered if you are in the middle of nowhere somewhere between Dieppe and Paris when your French is at best “Pigeon”.

In 2017 our London office took part in Ride Adland , a virtual BKool-based cycling challenge against other advertising industry companies (we came 9th out of 24 in the main challenge), and this is when I realised there were quite a few keen cyclists around in the company.

So I summoned up the courage and penned an email to everyone on the distribution list that read:

Hello everyone. I've grabbed this list from the Adland event distribution list so apologies if this isn't remotely interesting to you.

I've been stewing an idea about a company cycling challenge and wanted to gauge interest to see if it was worth pursuing.

As the title suggests the idea is to cycle from London to Paris in 24 hours. Whilst on the 1 hand 300k in 24 hours sounds like utter madness, it's totally achievable with some training.

General idea would be to depart London London Office at midday on a Saturday between May and August (for best evening light and conditions) and get to Newhaven and take the midnight (or so) crossing arriving in Dieppe at around 4am giving us about 8 hours to get to Paris in time for Sunday midday. The route to Paris in France would follow the Avenue Verte which is a purpose built cycle track that goes all the way into Paris.

In terms of organising we could either just sign up to an organised event or we could organise it ourselves and save some cash (probably).

That's about as far as the idea has got. I'd like it if we could incorporate it into some of the Impact initiatives we run at Spotify and raise some money for a good cause or 2. Maybe Spotify could assist with some elements of it - like branded kit - or utilising our impact day or something.

So for know just reaching out with the idea and see what kind of interest there is.

Thanks a lot, Rupert

Weirdly, (because I was quite pumped about the idea) after I sent the email out I forgot about it. Normally I’d be apprehensive about responses (or lack of them) but due to workloads and year-end I threw myself into work and forgot about it.

The response was encouraging, very encouraging, beyond anything I could have imagined. By the end of the day (about 4 hours later) I had 7 people saying yes, and by the end of the Monday after the weekend the number had gone up to 13. With an additional yes through Slack from a colleague in Stockholm taking it to 14, and including myself taking it to 15, it looked like this might actually be on.

Given the time of the year I was going to let it ride until the Christmas break and then in the New Year start the planning process with aplomb. It really could happen!

Well in some ways I shouldn't be surprised but when we got back post-Christmas and New Year, the numbers came crashing down. It’s fair enough. I was trying to find the right balance between organising the event and stumping up cash and the balance fell firmly into the “let’s just pay to get on a ride”, and with the numbers that were committed it ended up being the only option.

Certainly, there are companies out there that will lay it all on for you, but you really need a lot of riders to make the economics work.

So, in the end, there were only 3 of us from Spotify who were able to commit to the ride, and an old friend and riding partner Ash - with whom I rode the London Revolution and a brutal ride I called the Yorkshire Terr(i)or (geddit?).

We signed up to the Challenge Sophie Sportive which will see 150 riders take on the challenge and we leave London on Saturday 5th May, head to Newhaven where we will catch the ferry to Dieppe, and from there ride to Paris along the Avenue Verte. It’s a perfect ride, 300km in total, and well worthy of the challenge.

I’ll be riding for the Alzheimer’s Society and hope to raise a little money (£1 per km is my target). We lost my father-in-law to Alzheimer’s and my mother-in-law has been badly affected by dementia. It is the cruellest of diseases and I have witnessed first hand how it destroys people and the knock-on effect it has on their family and loved ones.

If you’d like to support me for 1 or a few more km then I would be extremely grateful. You can do so by clicking the image below to my VirginMoneyGiving page or visiting this link.

Thank you, and I’llbe sure to keep you up to date on my challenge on this blog.

#london2paris #ChallengeSophie #avenueverte #bike #ride #challenge #alzheimer's society #Fundraising

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