Who

Who are we?

Why are we here?

What even is life?

Don’t worry, we won’t subject you to amateur philosophy- deciding what to have for dinner is more or less the extent of our existentialism.

So where to start?

Well, I suppose names would be useful- Matt and Iona. So there you go! Exciting stuff.

You may wonder what could have possibly happened in our lives that has made us want to cycle 15000km. Or in fact, there’s a good chance that you don’t really care. Ach well, we’ll tell you tell you anyway..

 

Matthew

By Iona

Matt has long since been described as a nice little Kentish boy. His sense of adventure has only recently developed; as a young boy he enjoyed baked beans, rabbits and hugs from his mum.

His first memory on a bicycle is going over the handlebars as a 5 year old. Maybe that accounts for his odd looks.

Into his teenage years he developed a love of the carabiner; although it seems that initially he just enjoyed holding them as in fact it actually took him several more years to actually try rock climbing.

As a 15 year old he raised money for his local hospice by climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, telling a local reporter “I know it is going to be hard. It all comes down to being focused and well organised“. Indeed Matthew loves organisation. To the extent that no day is complete unless his breakfast bowl and spoon have been laid out for the following morning.

He has now spent over 8 years frequenting the Scottish mountains, wearing his self-laminated OS maps like necklaces. He is more than used to a bit of wilderness, having survived many a night in his £20 Argos tent, fueled on a diet of plain pasta, with a side of ketchup of course.

               

 

Iona

By Matt

Half human, half aquatic creature. She would probably rather swim 15,000km than cycle it, and would still beat me. Her main sporting background is swimming and she has enough medals to sink a battleship. Despite this, if you ask her if she is any good at swimming she would no doubt give you a death stare and say she is ‘rubbish.’

She does have a nice smile, not that we see it all that often. She should perhaps try to look more cheery when she turns up on the ward each morning for work, as the nurses frequently ask her how the night shift has been, when she is actually arriving for the day shift.

Iona’s first cycling memory is also of flying over the handlebars for which she required stitches in her chin (see below). She is now a seasoned cycle commuter and every day is an opportunity for her to be quicker than the day before and to steal more strava QOMs from consultant radiologists around the hospital. Indeed she is frequently seen cranking up steep hills in her top gear; perhaps why all of her gears apart from the highest one are covered in cobwebs.

                     

 

So that’s us, two oddballs. In all seriousness though, the main thing that you should know about us is that we will take this challenge seriously and give it our best shot. We want to try our best to raise a decent amount of money for Glasgow Children’s Hospital Charity, and this will be our motivation on day 150 of cycling when we are nauseated at the sight of our bikes.