The Big Grimpe is...
	one man... Kevin Bradley... Forty four years old. From London in the UK. Not quite tall enough to account for his weight! Works as a Business Analyst by day for French bank BNP Paribas. At other times enjoys relaxing and spending time near, or preferably in bed. Other hobbies include wearing lycra and playing rock music, and wearing lycra and riding bicycles. There is a theme developing here.
	two wheels... Wilier Triestina Evasion... One and a bit years old. From Vicenza in Italy. Very much lighter than Kevin Bradley, Day job is to ferry the said Mr Bradley to and from his place of work. Is an example of a road bike, designed to cover much longer distances than in it's current employment. However to do so would require the presence of a "fit" cyclist on board.
	two thousand six hundred miles... The French road system... Dating from Roman times though considerably improved by the French government in the 17th century. They are well maintained and "usually" quiet. Famous also for their tree lined avenues begun it is believed by Napoleon to shield his marching armies from the sun. The trees do not of course help when the road starts to go uphill!
	quite a lot of mountains... Well officially one hundred... But unofficially more, much more! France has two major mountain ranges, Les Alpes and Les Pyrénées and the designated route goes over both of them. Just for good measure it also meanders through the Vosges, Massif Central and Jura ranges. Add the whole amount of uphill together and it totals something like fifty four thousand metres, that's thirty three miles vertical!
	so what is a grimpe... Well a Grimpe is simply a climb. It's one of those French words that have been adopted by the sport of cycling, other examples are peleton, domestique, étage... There are many such terms but the one that worries me most is the grimpeur The grimpeur is the climber. The specialist rider who excels at going uphill. They usually weigh in at between 60 and 70 kilos, 75% of which is thigh muscle with the remainder largely concerned with housing and industrial sized heart and lungs. Basically they are freaks! But they can climb hills. I am not a freak. Well not in those terms anyway. I am certainly not between 60 and 70 kilos and nor can i suck the air from a medium sized room with one intake of breath. And therein lies the problem, and the challenge. I've been trying to think of a way of conveying just what's involved with this ride, particularly to the non-cyclist. It's not easy but perhaps a little science can help. I know from my training, such as it is, that 20 minutes of vigourous aerobic exercise will burn around 300 calories, depending on how vigourous you are of course. So let's say a visit to the gym will burn around 500 to 700 calories, a run say, some toning, weights etc... So how about cyling eighty miles a day with around 2000 to 3000 metres of climbing thrown in? Well I've done some rides like that and they typically burn around 4000 calories.  Do the arithmetic then and you see that for about five weeks I'll be doing the equivalent of six to eight gym sessions a day, every day, well with a couple of days off to lie in bed complaining! In summary then I am going to ride a bicycle 2600 miles around France, over some quite scary mountains and it's going to hurt! But what is important is that through my efforts, and much more importantly your support I am going to raise a nice big sum of cash for the National Autistic Society and for autism. For more about the NAS and autism please read on here... If however I have managed to pique your interest in cycling just a little then you might like to peruse the following...
	there are hills, and there are hills... Two years ago I rode my first proper col. A col is a mountain pass and it's what grimpeurs climb up to impress each other. I entered a cyclosportive event in the Alps. The organisers give you what is known as a parcours (another French term). This is a representation of the profile of the route ie. the bits that go up and the bits that go down. Now you can look at one of these on paper, or on a website and it sort of registers in your brain as a mild concern. But staring at them gives you no indication of what it's like to ride one. Let me try to explain. Here is the profile of a hill that many people may know. This is Ditchling Beacon on the South Downs near Brighton. This is the little surprise that waits at the end for all those once a year cyclists who ride the London to Brighton event... What this profile tells you is that Ditchling Beacon rises about 170 metres in rwo and a half kilometres. That equates to an average gradient of around 6.6% though as you can see from the profile it starts off gentle and then gets nasty. As anyone who has ridden a bike up it will testify to! Now compare Ditchling Beacon above with the profile below. This is probably one of the most famous climbs in cycling. It is Alpe d'Huez, scene of many a battle in the Tour de France... The first thing you might want to notice is that I have had to amend the distance scale as the Alpe goes on for a touch longer than the Beacon. In fact it's well over five times longer, and while we're at it over six times higher. Alpe d'Huez rises nearly 1100 metres in fourteen kilometres giving it an average gradient of 7.7% The steeper you go the more it hurts it's a simple rule, so if you've ridden up Ditchling Beacon imagine what it feels like to ride up something like Alpe d'Huez. And the poor Alpe famous though she is is not one of the monsters on the challenge. Some highlights en route include the col du Grand Colombier in the Jura, a 1250 metre hike in sixteen kilometres. Then there's the col du Tourmalet in the Pyrénées which ascends 1400 metres over nineteen kilometres. And then there's the daddy of them all mont Ventoux, the windy mountain which appears to be on the moon but is in fact just outside Avignon. This little beauty goes up 1600 metres over twenty three tortuous kilometres. All this fun awaits me this summer of course. To see just where I'm going and what I'm going over just jump to where it says below... Now to finish I think we need just a litle bit of nerdy statistics for those who are interested in these kind of things. I rode up Alpe d'Huez in 2006 on fresh legs and it took me about one hour and ten minutes. Our grimpeur friend pictured above, the sadly departed Marco Pantani still holds the record for the fastest ascent. He climbed the mountain in thirty seven minutes thirty five seconds. Of course he had already raced 162 kilometres in stage 10 of that year's Tour De France (1995), so he was "warmed up". For the even more nerdy Pantani's time has been adjusted down to 36'40" (some say 36'50") against modern ascents as the "official" timed ascent is now 13.8km not the 14km over which Pantani was timed. Of course this means that Lance Armstrong's time trial ascent of 37'34" is in fact nowhere near "il pirata". I warned you about the cyling stuff!