Our new Hope Ambassador - Lucy van der Haar! 

As many of you might know, Lucy is a local cycling legend who comes from South Leicestershire. Lucy has many accolades under her belt including being the two-time UCI Junior Road World Champion. Lucy now lives in the Netherlands with her husband and is still racing professionally.

We are excited to say Lucy will be assisting our Tour de Hope cyclists by giving advice and tips throughout their training before our next epic event in September 2021. After speaking with Lucy earlier in the month, she was able to pass along some advice for the team!

Don’t underestimate the importance of stretching:

Before and after going on your bike, make sure your body is prepared for whatever exercise you are going to give it. While cycling is a great low-impact activity, it’s also extremely repetitive and can often lead to a limited range of motion. To combat tightness and pain, cyclists need to maintain a consistent stretching routine that focuses on the muscle groups that contract concentrically during pedalling and can limit the mobility of your joints.

Fuelling your body properly:

It can be easy to just get all the gels and chews that the professionals are eating but it’s important to know what works for you and your body. Try to test out what you are eating before a big race to see how you fare and then you will have one less thing to worry about when the big day comes!

Practise your distance:

If you know how far you need to go for your event, take advantage of that knowledge and work your way up to that distance. Understandably, not everyone has hours to dedicate to cycling every week but if you know you have 80 miles of terrain you need to cover a day, perhaps try to do 20 one week then 40 and so on. Consistency is key!

We are thrilled to have Lucy as our ambassador and look forward to all the other information we will be able to obtain from her! If you would like information on how to become an ambassador, contact the Hope team here.

We still need to raise the final hundred thousand pounds to reach our £1.5 million mark to double the space and capacity of The Hope Clinical Trials Facility and need YOUR help to get there! Donate to the appeal here.