In November 2010, after many years of trying, my wife and I welcomed our baby daughter into the world. After two days in Special Care at Warwick Hospital, she was diagnosed with a heart murmur. Three days later she had a cardiac scan and was diagnosed with a congenital heart defect known as Tetralogy of Fallot and referred to Birmingham Children's Hospital.
Since then she has had regular checks at BCH and is on the waiting list to have surgery to correct the condition. This is scheduled for mid September 2011.
I decided in early 2011 that I wanted to raise money for the Birmingham Children's Hospital Heart Unit after seeing the work done by the BCH Charities. At the time I considered a number of options (swimming, running, etc.), before a chance discussion with one of my friends at work regarding some photos of the Giro d'Italia passing through the Dolomites lead to the idea of riding the Maratona dles Dolomites (a regular, major sportive event shown on Italian television) .
This remained the seed of an idea for about six months. In the meantime I set about refurbishing my twenty year old racing bike so that I could begin the training. In late August I decided that the Maratona was the event I was going to attempt along with a group of cyclists from work (pending a successful application).
This blog was setup as a record of my training going from novice cyclist to riding a major sportive event and to, hopefully, inspire others to do the same.
The training programme I am following is taken from "Elite Performance Cycling - Successful Sportives" by Garry Palmer & Richard Allen.
