David Patten and 3 friends to take on 500km cycle ride in support of friend Matt Gaut running to Paris

David Patten is taking on this year’s sold-out London 2 Paris 2023 ride, cycling 500km over the course of 4 days.
He’ll be taking part along with 3 other friends, and be joined by 150 other riders and will be cycling 500km over the course of 4 days, all the way from Greenwich Park in London to Paris.

Matt Gaut will be taking on the epic challenge of running from London 2 Paris, conquering over 350 miles in just 5 days in memory of his son, Harry, who tragically passed away after a battle with leukaemia.

“One of my best friends Matt Gaut is running Le Big Run in tandem with L2P 2023.
Matt completed L2P 2021 and to up the ante the following year, he ran the UK leg and completed the rest of L2P 2022 on the bike with the other riders.
I was at Matt’s ‘Little Harry’s Charity Golf day’ last year and as part of the auction, there were 2 places for this year’s L2P 2023, which after a little encouragement I successfully bid on the places and that was me signed up to the event.
I thought about how I could maximise raising money and so sold the idea to 3 friends, who are also good friends of Matt’s, to ride with me and to form our own 4 man team and we have set a team target of £10,0000 on our Just Giving page and we are getting very close to hitting that target.”

This isn’t the first time that David has taken on a big challenge to raise funds for Cure Leukaemia, as in September 2022 himself and a friend took on the famous Kilimanjaro mountain climb.

 

“I do like to challenge myself every couple of years and my latest challenge was in September 2022.
The opportunity to climb in 2022 came about and so we took up the challenge and we decided to raise money for Cure Leukaemia, supporting Matt and Debbie, and we managed to raise £5,000 which we were very happy with.
We completed the 5,895mtr summit on September 9th 2022, it was an amazing experience, never to be forgotten.”

Despite enjoying challenges, David isn’t a cyclist, and will be taking on this 500km challenge as someone who is quite new to cycling, having only completed his first big road-bike earlier this year.

“I am not a bike rider as such and in fact my first road bike ride was only in March this year and yes, I did fall off the first time out, not being used to cleats when it came to stopping.
Fortunately, there was no damage to either rider or bike and I have managed to unclip successfully ever since!

Our training started as autumn became winter, so we decided to do some mountain bike rides over the South Downs and to keep off the wet and treacherous roads.
That training certainly helped, with lots of off-road hill work and now that we have been able to get out on the road bikes more often, we are all feeling the benefits of the early winter hill work.
Just last weekend we rode just short of 60 miles, our longest training ride and so that was very pleasing for all team members.
It will definitely be the 4 days in the saddle that will be the challenge but one that we are all looking forward to, I think!

London 2 Paris 2023 is now only a couple of weeks away and we are all very excited by the whole thing.
We can’t wait to be part of the CL family and spend 4 days with some incredible people and of course, to be there for Matt as he completes his amazing feat of running from London to Paris.”