27/06/2012 - 13 Hours In The Saddle For Coach Boss
Best known for organising luxury coach tours, Ian Luckett is now recovering from a much less comfortable travel experience.
The Director of Fareham based Lucketts Travel has just completed a mammoth cycling challenge in Sweden - taking part in the worlds largest organised bike ride.
The grueling “Vatternrundan” event sees 22,000 participants race around the spectacular Lake Vattern.
The Ian joined the 45 man QlikTech team for the 300 km ride, along with local friends, Paul Swinburbne and Mark Child, who is the Vice President Information Systems for QlikTech. They completed the ride around the lake in just under 13 hours. The team started the ride at 5am on Saturday morning and cycled through until 6pm that same day, with only two unscheduled stops – one for a puncture and the other for a broken spoke.
Charity was the big winner, with Ian and the team cycling to raise money for the HopeHIV Charity. It helps to support 50,000 children and young people in sub-Saharan Africa who have been orphaned or affected by HIV/AIDS. It’s a cause close to Ian’s heart. Last year he raised money for the charity by cycling 120km in the London to Hayling Island bike ride.
Despite running an award-winning travel company, Ian has managed to find enough free time to train for this latest grueling event. Ian, Mark and Paul decided to enter the “Vatternrundan” twelve months ago, gradually increasing the length of their training rides over the last year. Starting at 30km, then gradually moving up to 50km, 100km, 150km - the finally achieved 200km the weekend before the event.
Ian Luckett said, “This challenge is just about as far away from my day job as you can imagine. Normally I’m obsessed by driving hours and tachographs, but I knew this was one journey where taking breaks wasn’t going to be on the agenda! Just finishing the ride has been an achievement in itself – and there’s real satisfaction to have been invited to be part of the QlikView team, who, across their worldwide business, are now well on track towards achieving their target of raising $150,000 for this very worthwhile cause in 2012”.