Geoff Thomas Foundation

WELCOME to the first of what I intend to be regular diary entries over the
coming weeks and months as we continue our fund raising efforts for the Geoff
Thomas Foundation.

Of course, a major part of that fund raising is being built around us riding
the Tour de France route again for three weeks in July - and there will be
plenty to write about as the ride approaches, and while we are on the Tour
itself

But, for now, there has been a lot to occupy me with the Foundation itself.
Just this week, for example, myself and my good friend Professor Charlie
Craddock were invited to talk at a big drug company exhibition at the end of
June in Cambridge. It is a very important conference, with all the UK drugs
manufacturers in attendance, and to be invited to something like that shows how
important the role of our Foundation can be.

People have asked me exactly what the Foundation's aims are.

The short answer is we are trying to raise enough money to finance clinical
research at five areas which we have identified as being leaders in the field of
leukaemia research, namely - London Barts, Manchester Royal, Nottingham City
Hospital, Birmingham QE and Oxford John Radcliffe Hospital.

We're aiming to support the professors and their teams in the great work they
are doing in researching blood cancers. We're very focused on something that is
close to my heart - clinical research which will benefit patients who are
suffering and don't have many options.

Normally, it takes years and years to develop drugs to the point where they
are available to leukaemia sufferers. We aim to help improve and speed up that
process.

To cut a long story short, that could eventually save hundreds and thousands
of lives.

The experts are very confident that they are catching up with certain
cancers, finding answers to some questions and the Foundation can play an
important part in that

I will tell you more about the Foundation's work as time goes on. For now, as
much time as I am spending on setting that up, I am also conscious that our Tour
ride is less than a couple of months away.

My training had been going pretty well but took a turn for the worse last
month when myself and a training pal Mike Dickinson had a touch of wheels and
were involved in quite a nasty crash.

It has been a couple of years since I last fell off a bike and, to be honest,
I had forgotten one simple rule of cycling - there is no painless way to fall
off a bike!

I hurt my ribs badly and, I suspect, broke a finger but Mike was a lot worse
off and ended up being taken off in an ambulance - not that he got any sympathy
from us once we realised he wasn't too seriously hurt. Mike is still hobbling
around with damaged tendons in his hip but, hopefully, he will be back on the
bike soon.

The crash forced me off the bike for a couple of weeks but I'm now back in
the swing of things and, having done this two years ago, I feel reasonably happy
with where I am at in terms of preparation.

Last Friday, a group of us who are doing the Tour - Bully, Dave, Mike and a
couple of their pals Marcus and Tom - had a great 90-plus mile ride out in the
Cotswalds and I felt pretty good. I'll talk more about the other characters
involved in the Tour as we go along because the guys have some fantastic,
inspirational stories to tell.

This Friday should be a good day as well because a group of us are riding in
a press day down in Kent which is being used to publicise the Etape in early
July.

For those of you who don't know, the Tour this year starts in England with a
short prologue around the streets of London on the Saturday, July 7, and the
first stage "proper" running from London to Canterbury the next day.

A week before that Canterbury stage, there is an "Etape" event which is open
to the public and will follow the exact route that the pros will be doing a week
later. That Etape event sold out thousands of places in a matter of hours so
that is going to be a fabulous ride - and we will all be doing it to publicise
our fund raising efforts.

That Etape, incidentally, takes place on Sunday July 1 and we have a few
places to allocate in return for a donation to the Foundation.