Post from Hammy Chris

Hi Guys,

Managed to get wifi in the hotel tonight so thought I'd post. Thanks to Jen, Ruth, Mum and Holly who've been keeping you all up to date.

Day two was a little easier. Well if I start with Day One you'll understand.

We set off as a three and rode for two hours, then Bob and I continued on and we sat one rider out each hour till early afternoon. It was tiring and became apparent that NO OTHER TEAM had more than one rider on the road at any time. Oh and all the other teams have 4 riders. So in 200 miles they each to 50. AND they leapfrog their riders using the minbus to keep time down. So during the afternoon we did solo stints to allow us to recover. We got in in 12.5hrs which was a great efforst and became a little notorious in the restaurant that evening for the first team to ride in pairs!

We guessed we'd never make it to the Alp in one piece if we continued at the pace we did on day one so on day two, we all did the first hour as a warm up and then rode solo all day, one hour on, two off (the other teams have three!). We did about 70 miles each and did the last 10 miles together. The terrain was much tougher today with logs of hills but we got home as one of the first teams in. Fiona's been a star driving, organising and knocking up grub. WE REALY COULDN'T DO THIS WITHOUT HER.

Tomorrow is the biggy. The plan is to do 15 mile stints each from the start to get us to the Alp in plenty of time. Then it's a kit change into out TWIN SIX tops and hit the hill. Hopefully it'll all be over by about 6pm. Hopefully......

If I can blog tomorrow night I will but I'll try and get some texts to the girls and see what they can do.

Chris