JAUNT 

At about the age of 9 I ran cross-country when I was at school and was picked to represent the school in a race, after the race I was approached by a coach and was asked if I would like to try running. I turned up at the local running club and as they say the rest is history.

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My running career lasted about 20 years and took me to lots of different places and to a high standard. The training was hard and took over my life for those 20 years but was always enjoyable. After about 20 years it was becoming less enjoyable and I decided to stop, I didn’t slow down as you would expect I just stopped completely.

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I didn’t do any exercise for about 10 years and then slowly I started to run a little again. I didn’t do much exercise just enough to keep me a little bit fitter than the last 10 years. About 2 years ago a colleague at work suggested that we ride the first Wales Velothon, a 120km route that took in two epic mountain climbs.

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A few of us decided to do this event and we formed a cycling group to train together for it. A couple of months before the event the route was changed and the distance increased to 140km. We decided to do this ride for charity (my charity being MacMillan Cancer Support) and this is where my love of cycling started. We trained for this event as a group and decided to write about our training and the event itself.

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This year we have decided to do our own charity ride and will be riding from North to South Wales over two days in September, I will be riding for Mind which is a mental health charity. I have decided to ride for Mind as I have suffered with depression and mental health issues for the last 15 years and without support of charities like Mind I would be finding life very difficult.

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If you would like to support me on my charity ride and help me raise funds for Mind, please go to my Virgin Money Giving page http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/MikeShevyn