We’ve been training officially since 19th April although many of us signed up in March. Nearly three months on I cannot begin to tell you what a long, long time ago that seems now. Start training in March, someone suggested back then. “Well, it’s a bit cold and windy out don’t you think? And anyway, the official training doesn’t start for another month yet, so anything we do before that is a bonus. Let’s wait for the programme to kick off, it’ll be warmer.” Big mistake, HUGE. I told you I was rubbish if the goal wasn’t close enough to touch, and back then it seemed a million years away.I actually even missed the first “official” Sunday team ride – stranded in London due to a volcanic ash cloud. I remember clearly how frustrating it was to feel I was missing the first ride with the team. Remarkably keen, can you believe I hired a bike for the day and cycled out to, and around, Richmond Park to make sure I didn’t fall behind on Day One. Amazingly I was marked as absent on the attendance list – I would have thought such commitment would have counted double! Even more amazingly it was a glorious sunny spring day in London and pouring with rain in Malta :). I managed to cycle the full 60km and felt incredibly proud of myself.
The first two weeks called for us to put in 180km a week, including that massive 60km ride on the Sunday and two 40km days midweek. Getting up “early” (6.45am) in the grey and the rain to cycle twice as far as I actually needed in order to get to work took some doing, I can tell you. And I never thought I could actually do a 60km ride at all, let alone follow it on the Monday with another 40km. What your legs can do when push comes to shove will surprise you (provided you can actually get them to lift off the bed in the first place of course).
The weeks have, arguably, flown by and we are now in the final phase and expected to complete around 600km a week. Rest days are a thing of the past, and 5am alarm calls are the norm, except on Sunday when its a 4am start to get some of the required miles in before the sun becomes too unbearable. Honestly, it’s really hard to find a good reason to be getting up at that time day after day – but I’ve tried to make arrangements to hook up with one, or more, of the other Betfair cyclists each morning which makes a big difference to having a reason to get out of bed.
I was up at 5am again today to meet Dan at the usual place. Grabbing my bike I realised I had a flat rear tyre.... disaster! No way I was going to make a half five rendezvous, and to have any chance of cycling at all, I now had to change a tyre for only the second time in history. The first being a pretty laboured 2 hour session when I changed my “knobblies” for semi-slicks ready for the time trial a few weeks ago. I found out the hard way that it is possible to put a tyre on back to front and had to do them both twice. I almost resorted to asking Claire for her opinion it was that bad! It doesn’t bode well does it?
Texts and calls to Dan got no response. The urge to just go back to bed and write it off as a bad day was strong, but instead I found the will power to change the tyre in an electrifying F1 standard 10 minutes and miraculously found the tube stayed inflated! Still no answer from Dan and so, with no reason not to, I headed off, not relishing the thought of the next 2 ½ hours cycling by myself, and a whole fifteen minutes behind plan!!!
As it turns out he was heading up the hill as I was heading down it without us even seeing each other – clearly it was either still very very dark, or we are both so good we can now ride with our eyes shut! :)
Despite the disastrous start and a lone ride, my tyre and I managed just over 63km before work. Dinner with a colleague from work tonight so I had to cycle the crow’s route home, a mere 14km, putting me 2km short of today’s 80km target. Here's a link to the ride stats:
Oh, and do you want to know what was playing on my iPod when I get to work? It was Last Train To Clarkesville by The Monkeys. Great memories of the Summer of 1986 – The Mexico World Cup, the Hand of God and spending days on the beach with Gary, Dave, Steve and the 2 Paul's.
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