Get on yer bike – and take on a cycle legend

The former cycling professional, who is now a patron of the hospice, insisted it was not a race, but we both knew neither of us wanted to be embarrassed by the outcome.

Hugh Porter's won a gold at the Commonwealth Games, finished seventh out of 120 riders in the prologue of the Tour de France – in what was essential a warm up race for him at the time – and won four pursuit world championships.

My greatest sporting achievement is a toss up between winning a mascot only penalty shoot-out at Villa Park when I was 10 or running a six and a half minute mile about two months ago.

On paper it was disproportion mismatch to say the least, a cycling legend against a man who has never cycled or ran more than 10 continuous miles before this point.

However the ignorance of youth made me think I had a chance – Hugh's in his twilight years at 77 and I'm allegedly in my prime at 25 – surely being more than 50 years younger than him would give me the edge?

In fact, it was finding out Hugh's age that gave me the inspiration to get involved, as he and a group of friends all aged over 70, signed up for this year's sportive.

With a choice of three courses – an epic 100 mile challenge, a 64 mile standard route, I was happy with going in on the 'easy' 24 mile short route.

Whilst the majority of Hugh's friends joined him for the shorter challenge, remarkably 83-year-old Jim Carpenter signed up and completed the 60 mile course.

To try and get a bit of inside knowledge of how a former pro gears up for a hilly 24 mile ride, I primed Hugh for some tips. He advised me to do a few 20 miles plus rides a week and 'carb up' a bit before hand.

Whilst I had no problem with 'carbing up', the constant rain in the week building up to sportive was putting me off preparing. I managed a grand total of three miles before I thought I would be fine for the big race.

So to find out whether Hugh's miles on the clock work for or against him, I put it to the test as the cycle got underway at 10am on Sunday morning.

Well it got off to a slow start as I left in the group after Hugh's in the early morning sunshine in Kingswinford.

A red light which seemed to last forever was dampening by ambitions of catching up with him, but as I got to grips with what switch moved the gear up and down on my hybrid bike, I must have covered a mile with ease.

The course had elevations and drops of more than 1,000 feet, the biggest climb coming at about 10 miles in – my tactic was to try and stay as comfortable as I could until that point and hopefully my second wind (or the literal wind) would push me to the finish line, ideally in front of the cycling legend.

By the time I got to this stage in the race, I was beginning to think I had half a chance of passing him, as I'd passed at least a dozen cyclists at this point.

I did slow down a little after another dramatic hill as I passed through Pattingham and realised the dream of whizzing past Hugh Porter might be not come true.

I hadn't timed myself and got to the finish lane in good shape, not seeing Hugh at any point on the course named after the Wolverhampton born cyclist.

I made my way to the official with the times – I'd completed it in one hour 48 minutes and nine seconds.

Not bad I thought, that's 13.3 miles per hour and Hugh had told me prior to the event that's around the pace he'd been doing.

But the big question, how had Hugh done? One hour....41 minutes! He'd beaten my time by a good seven minutes.

Speaking after the sportive, Hugh who lives in Tettenhall with his wife, Olympic gold medallist swimmer Anita Lonsbrough, said: "It was a nice comfortable ride, I went along in my comfort zone.

"It's a couple of hours with a lot of good mates, some people who have been friends with me all my life.

"I've got one or two joint issues as most professionals would have, but the exercising of riding a bike is good for me. It's very good for your cardiovascular system, it really makes you breath on the climbs.

"It's hard going up one or two of the climbs, I gaze my bottom gears on some of them, but that's what the for and what a good bike can do.

"I'd like to thank everyone who got involved and raised money for this great cause, most families have to deal with cancer at some point – I lost my sister and I lost my uncle in the hospice, so there's a certain amount of poignancy there to be involved personally.

"I'll be back out riding again Tuesday, and we'll back again next year to hopefully raise even more."

And I'll be back again to try and cut down on those seven minutes!