The presentation v3

Small steps

Right then, here goes nothing...

Having already drafted a death by powerpoint presentation to tell my family, friends and potential sponsors and partners about my plan to compete in the 2011 Dakar event, Russ Williamson and Paul Martin have kindly set me up with my own blog to capture my progress on this 30 or so month journey to the start of the race.

I need to do a lot more research and planning over the next month or so before I take the presentation to the wider audience, where I will look a complete fool if they start asking me the simple question like "are you eligible?" and "how much is the registration fee?". But any plan starts with an idea....

When I have worked out how to use this blog properly I will attempt to upload my presentation so you can have a look at what exactly I am intending to do, many of you won't even know what the Dakar is! What I can quickly tell you is that the Dakar is a 10,000km race on motorbikes, quads, 4x4 cars, trucks, to Dakar the Capital city of Senegal in NW Africa. The race originally started from Paris in 1979, but has recently started from Lisbon and Barcelona and next year it is being held entirely in South America, where the race will start in Buenos Aires, head out to Valparasio in Chile and back again. Having spent four months climing in Peru and Chile back in 1996, with my good friends Chris Haw and John Penhale, it would be great to race out there.

For those who don't know, I have loved motorbikes and ever since I road my school friend's 50cc over a jump into an apple tree at the age of 9. I had my first Suzuki TS250 trail bike when I was 12 years old and now, a few years on I plan to compete in the race on a motorbike!

I have booked my first proper two day off-road training session at Simon Pavey's offroad training school in South Wales - check out the website http://www.offroadskills.com so I am heading down there in two weeks time and I can't wait!

Since I am going to need some time from the business and support to achieve this goal, I have already presented my plan to Ben and Guy Wolstenholme, James Bull, who are family, friends and co-founder's of Moving Brands . They have been incredibly supportive and are right behind me which is fantastic at this early and critical stage. I have also presented this plan to Geoff Linsell, our MD, so the ball is rolling!

Oh, and this morning I received a text from a great friend of my mine, Kieran Doherty

"Tobes. Likely to cross in2 morocco on 13 august, hit Algeria then stay with friend in Tunisia 4 a few days. Rtn via Italy. Need 2 rtn 2 uk by 27th. Interested?! RoN"

.....emmmm