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JAYNE at last I have finished my write up of the TCR race, it's taken me
longer than the actual race!

At the beginning of 2015 I took a deep breath and resigned from my job of
18 years, I was on the lookout for a few new adventures. In the first few
months of being out of the office I spent my time booking holidays;
snowboarding in Val D’Isere, walking the West Highland Way, beginner’s tennis
lessons, cycling in Majorca and a charity bike ride from London to Utrecht
for the start of The Tour De France. The plan was to spend more time on my
bike and really give this year’s TT season a good go, I have ridden time trials
for a few years now and enjoyed the competition but any improvement in my
times was getting harder to come by.

I had just completed a charity ride for the Light Fund from London to Utrecht
for the start of the Tour De France and was in Amsterdam airport when I
received an email from a friend with a link to Katie’s Facebook page. Not being
a member of Facebook I asked him to elaborate “It’s a 4,000km race across
Europe in about 3 weeks’ time. Similar to RAAM, but self-supported. Get
home, have a look & if interested, I can give her your email address via FB, or
ask for hers.” I didn’t need to get home and investigate further I was looking
for my next adventure and this sounded right up my street, he forwarded
my contact details. I then waited anxiously for Katie to get in touch, I had
to wait 7 days, it turns out she was somewhere in Switzerland on a TCR
practise run.

On the 14th of July Katie and I were officially teammates!

The race started at midnight on 24th of July and we were to ride @ 4200km
from Belgium to Istanbul through France, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia,
Montenegro, Albania, Macedonia, Greece and Turkey with an estimated
38,000m of climbing. Totally unsupported, so no fancy hotels, hot showers,
sumptuous evening meals or mechanical assistance provided. In fact this

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