Ride London 100 2014 - on the trail of Boris

It's official. My 'Congratulations' magazine arrived this week. In six months time I'm going to be riding 100 miles through London and Surrey, doing my best to evade the sweepers scooping-up slower riders.

My husband and I visited London in January and saw some of the places I'll be riding through. It felt impossible, unreal, seeing all the traffic streaming past, to think I could be using those roads. And The Mall!

I'm looking for a tiara that will fit over my cycling helmet, so that I can feel properly dressed when I ride along the driveway to the palace.

So I'm excited, definitely but also...nervous. Really nervous. The kind that gives me butterflies in my stomach and threatens a migraine before nightfall. I'm worried that I'll be last. That I won't make it inside the all-important nine hours. That I'll be the oldest rider. That everyone else will be a 'proper' cyclist who will snort in derision as they pass a small, determined figure muttering "If Boris can do it" like an incantation.

Because at the moment, the only thing calming my fears is a picture of the Mayor of London on my desktop. I should make clear here, that the desktop I am talking about is the one on my PC. I haven't got a framed picture of Boris on my desk, which I dust every morning. That would be weird.

No, what I've got is a picture of him on his bike, tackling the route last year.

Now to be blunt, Boris does not appear to be a natural cyclist. He's no blond Bradley. He looks like someone feeling the burn. And probably, the saddle. And he finished. He was home inside nine hours and only slightly perturbed by the insults hurled in his direction by his fellow riders.

I know that tens of thousands of cyclists didn't get in to the event, all of them probably much better riders than me. I just have to remember the training I've already done, the times I've been out in driving rain and hail. This week I rode through floods so deep that my feet were under water. On Christmas Day I pretended not to notice the appalled look on my husband's face as I came downstairs in Lycra and confessed I was going out on the bike before dinner.

I've done the miles and I'll keep doing the miles. And on that day in August, although I might have more resemblance to Boris than to those riders on the cover of the magazine (look at them - apart from anything else, they've all got suicide pedals!), I hope I'll have earned my place among them.

It was London 2012 that inspired me to start cycling. It's London in 2014 that will present my personal Olympic challenge. So if you are in the capital towards the very end of the event, wait a while. I'll be making for the Mall and last or not, it will be the proudest moment of my life.