A week today, our London Director Gareth Atkinson will set off with around 150 other Club Peloton cyclists on their 1500km journey from London to Cannes, where MIPIM takes place.

Preparing for the challenge ahead has been a change to Gareth’s cycling routine as he usually put his road bike into retirement for the winter. Retiring isn’t an option for this year however, as to be ready for the gruelling 6 days he faces, Gareth and his bike have had to remain in action throughout the dark winter months, doing training rides whenever he can. He does accept that it hasn’t been quite so tough in the warm weather we’ve had over the past week though.

Gareth has been regularly getting up at 5am (to avoid the traffic) to ride the 25 miles from his home to our London Studio near Tower Bridge and has gradually been clocking up longer and longer rides at the weekends training with other Club Peloton members.  Some of his stalwart training partners have included Terry Crawford (from Forica – who he will be rooming with for the ride), Toby Fox from 3Fox International and Robert Romanis and Paul Jones from AHMM architects.

Last weekend Gareth completed his longest ride to date, clocking up 176km (110 miles) in just under 7 hours. He’s now cycled a staggering 1768km (1000 miles) this year ahead of the ride, and has three shorter rides planned to keep in shape for next week.

Last night Gareth attended the riders briefing at Coram Fields where the group received their final instructions ahead of the ride and were given their Cycle to Mipim jerseys, which will be worn on the first and final days.

We’ll be following Gareth’s progress throughout his Cycle to MIPIM and we’d again like to say a huge thank you to those companies who have supported him by sponsoring these include BlueBeam, B&K Structures, Academy Consulting, Handlesbanken, REC and Leyton

All the funds raised by the cyclists taking part will go to children’s charity Coram, which founded in 1739, is the UK’s oldest children’s charity. They help create stable, loving families for the UK’s most vulnerable children. Coram is the main beneficiary from Club Peloton fundraising but funds also go to Cyclist’s fighting cancer, Tom’s trust and Multiple system atrophy trust.

If you’d like to donate to support Gareth, it’s not too late, just visit https://my.race-nation.co.uk/sponsorship/entry/155794

Civic Engineers wishes Club Peloton, the support teams and all those who are cycling to Mipim all the very best in their final preparations for the ride.