Shaun's amazing effort

Last week, I met a phenomenal fundraiser, who's devoted his life to crazy challenges to raise money for those less fortunate than he is. When I asked him whether Kilimanjaro was on his agenda, he sneered, as if to say, "too mainstream". Hipster fundraising. I loved it

I was pressing him on his previous exploits & he told me it all began with a cycle across Cuba. I asked what kind of distance that was & he told me it was 243 miles. It was my turn to sneer, involuntarily, of course.
He defended it, talking about the terrain, the heat,etc.
I was mortified, & of course apologised profusely.

As he left, I sat in that coffee shop & reflected on how easily I could cycle 243 miles,in any conditions. I couldn't. No way. It would take me months of training before I'd attempt anything like that. I tried to put it into perspective & I realised that helping Shaun put together his challenge, constantly looking at cycle routes & trying to work out where Shaun would be bedding down for the night had completely desensitized me to distances. I'd look at the starting point, work out a realistic distance & Shaun would subsequently smash through those expectations

Looking back, Shaun put the work in day in, day out in training for this,& his attitude was always positive. There was never an issue of not doing it,& that lured me into thinking it was easy. I was booking his accomodation daily,always leaving it until he could go no further & using
the next town as a marker.

However, Shaun was hammering through distances seemingly effortlessly, averaging over 100miles per day,
& obviously this was getting consistently more difficult,as each morning he was hurting more & more. At no point did he complain. At no point did he doubt himself. At no point did he contemplate giving up.
It really was an inspirational effort,& a fantastic achievement to complete them all. & he made it look easy.

When he came up with the idea,& we were first discussing the logistics, he spoke about 1200 miles in under 13 days. This seemed a lot to me, but Shaun ended up cycling to every Premier League ground in 10 days. He achieved this by cutting out his rest days completely. No time to allow his body to recover, just a single-minded mission to get round all 20 stadiums & get home. Incredible stuff