Have you ever had one of those mornings after the night before, when you realise you and your mates decided to agree on something “extra” ordinary like cycle to Marrakech?

I guess this could make sense if you lived in Casablanca or even in Madrid, but Scotland... Now that’s just either bravado or pure madness. Well that’s exactly what three regular dads decided to do. The challenge was how do we get fit, maintain our busy jobs and have quality family time… Here is introducing the three fat dads.

And so began this idiotic challenge of a lifetime, which started 12 months ago in April 2013 when we enlisted professional sports science help from the University of Heriot Watt to give us a training regime and dietary advise that would get us in shape. The aim was to transform from fatdadsonbikes to fitdadsonbikes. This winter training was brutal and staying away from the steak and wine, cheese and biscuits mid afternoon snacks and after work drinks was even harder…

Now it’s only a few days until us three fat dads on bikes will start riding from London to Marrakech on April 4, 2014. We’ll be on our bikes for more than 2000 miles and 23 days. And for all you cycling nerds, yes that is indeed the equivalent distance of a Tour De France (but not racing -- just riding for survival!).

Now every mad adventure needs a great cause, and ours is no exception. We plan to raise over 100,000 pounds for caring charities. Helping others in less fortunate circumstances than us was a critical part of the plan. Our chosen principal charities will be Maggie’s Cancer Care Centres, Children’s Hospice Association Scotland, Carers Trust, Cancer Research UK and Education for all Morocco.

As a salesforce.com employee our endeavour is supported by the Salesforce Foundation, so every cent we raise will be matched by salesforce.com. Thank you Salesforce!

FDOB (as we are collectively known) are Douglas Armstrong (architect and nutter behind the project), Douglas Anderson (willing if naïve accomplice) and myself, Campbell McDermid (the “me too” fool). We’re all middle-aged dads who should not really wear lycra, but unfortunately do.

In addition, more than 70 riders of all abilities and all sexes (there are at least two types in the peloton) will be riding 300 miles from London to Paris in order to help drive the fundraising and to give us a proper send-off.

Raising money is hard but the financial pain will be nowhere near as bad as the physical and emotional pain of riding 100 miles a day for 23 days consecutively. So please help us alleviate at least one of the pains and donate via our Virgin Money account or by texting ‘FDOB £5 or £10’ to 70070.

You can follow our progress on Facebook, too! www.facebook.com/fatdadsonbikes.

This post origianlly appeared on the Salesforce ExactTarget Marketing Cloud UK Blog.

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