I honestly don’t know how this happened. I get these rushes of blood to the head and, before I know it, I have agreed to do something really stupid.

So I am spending 9 days in September cycling from Lands End to John O’Groats with a bunch of maniacs in lycra. That’s 969 miles, or a little under 108 miles a day across all the hilliest bits of Britain. And it’s only a couple of years ago that my biggest challenge to data had been cycling to work (seriously).

What’s actually worse than the inevitable, horrible pain of the event, the mile after relentless mile of additional climbing, trying to hang on to the tail of much, much fitter riders and all the rest, is the fundraising. So of course, I have to fundraise. I am a professional fundraiser, for God’s sake.

And being someone who’s built their entire career on their (possibly inflated) fundraising skills, I have to raise lots of money, don’t I?

So that target my fellow challenger, the frankly mildly deranged Peter Muffet (his last event was running the London marathon in a 9 foot long whale costume) has set is well, challenging. Obviously we are raising money for Sightsavers. We need to raise money for something tangible and which has real impact. And which changes the lives of as many people as we can.

So our target is to fund a sight restoring operation for every mile we cycle. That’s 969 operations, which cost £30 each. That’s 969 people whose lives will be transformed. And that’s a really, really scary target. And I don’t know how we’re going to reach it.

Well fundraising is all about being brave and taking risks. So hopefully, this will work out. Somehow. If not, there are other careers….

(Oh and if you want to help, you can do so here. £30 to make a blind person see. You can’t say no to that, surely?)