But for all the training, the stocking up on Immodium, padded cycling shorts and anti viral hand gel I need to keep reminding myself why I'm going to trade First Great Western, an office in Chelsea and the family for a week cycling 400km on dusty roads in that kind of heat.
Family. One of the many things banned after 17 April 1975 by the Khmer Rouge that we take so much for granted, along with education, medicine, urban life. Their aim was to ruthlessly and extremely follow the philosophy of Mao Tse Tung and create the ultimate agrarian society, cut off from all external influences.
I watched John Pilger's remarkable documentary 'Year Zero' made in 1979 immediately after the Vietnamese invasion and overthrow of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. It's incredibly difficult to watch. Even 33 years on it's easy to understand why it's hailed as one of the most influential documentaries of all time. As Pilger walks through the deserted streets of Phnom Phen, frozen in time from the April days 4 years earlier when the residents were all ordered to evacuate he passes piles of money lying in the gutters, washed down the road by the monsoon rains.Money printed in vast quantities by the ousted regime but completely worthless.
The images of the sick, tortured and traumatised shock still, and pricked a nation's conscience so deeply that Britons donated in excess of £45m when western governments continued to recognise the overthrown Khmer dictatorship for fear of the communist leanings of the Vietnamese liberators.
And then I watched a clip of Margaret Thatcher from Blue Peter in 1988. The needs in Cambodia seemed just as great, just as pressing 9 years later.
Of course the children I will meet at the Hope Asia orphanage a week on Tuesday will be one, two or even three generations on from those who endured the darkest of horrors. I'm intrigued to see how the country is rebuilding itself and re establishing the institutions of government, culture and family life.
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