Dan Welldon entered a bike race in the Scottish Highlands to raise money for Saving Faces and Macmillan Cancer Support.
The race itself was eventful and made front page news in all the newspapers in Scotland as it was sabotaged by a few locals upset that the roads were closed for 3 hours early on a Sunday morning. Thus halfway through the event cyclists found themselves riding through a 20 mile carpet of nails that had been strewn along the route.
Hundreds of cyclists lined the edges of the road for miles all frantically repairing punctures. Some were unlucky enough to get 5 or 6 punctures. The race then had to be suspended for an hour while the road was cleared as much as possible and 2 cyclists and a police motorcycle out rider who had fallen as a result of punctures on fast sections were airlifted to hospital with injuries.
“In the event”, Dan says, “I came a respectable 283 out of 3700 (there were a lot of very serious cyclists out there!) and achieved my 30kmh target (just!). But what is important is the huge amount that was raised, and the relief that I’m still in one piece. We are hugely indebted to Iain and his fantastic team, and raising money for his invaluable charity is just one way that I hope to repay that debt.”