Tour Sloth

It's a good job that I hadn't planned to try and fit in lots of riding/running this week. My dodgy foot issue decided to step up the ante when it knows it's got a race coming up, not great timing but it will be beaten into submission :)

 

An ideal excuse to have a few sessions of Ice/Compression/Elevation on the sofa in front of the TdF. Some pretty exciting and very interesting moves already and we haven't even got to any mountains yet!

Oh yes. Black socks? Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

The (Relative) Overload

Thankfully the dead legs from a big weekend of running have subsided and today I was able to get out for a few very sweaty hours on the bike.

I've just spent time cooling off completing the essential function of tabbing up the TdF programme for the days I like the look of and pondering whether or not I'll be able to catch any of the Ventoux stage in between laps at the TwentyFour12. Given that I'm down for pairs with AQR team-mate Abie, I'm thinking maybe not :)

Going back to the "relative overload" in the title; I'd not actually tested my dodgy parts with consecutive days running until this weekend when I clocked up an hour Thursday (road/grass), another hour Saturday (road/grass) and finally and hour and a half Sunday (forest). 

I certainly felt the aftermath but everything held together, so apart from being a bit concerned about the excessive humidity of late (I still can't quite get the hang of this drinking whilst running thing) I am optimistic about getting round the off road half next weekend at the Wyre Forest - ominously sponsored by SweatShop!!!

Mynd how you go

Whilst many other folks I knew were going round and round in circles we hit the tarmac for 72 hilly miles in the beautiful Shropshire countryside where Madge was a total star and didn't put a (metaphorical) foot wrong. Oh yes and there were cake stops. Really good cake stops.

First big climb of the day was up over the Long Mynd at the Castle Hill end but the real killer was the double whammy after lunch which reduced grown men to taking their shoes off to pad up the hill. I was very glad that I didn't load down my tummy with food before this one as I think there was a fair chance it could have made an unexpected reappearance.

An excellently organised low key day out with a refreshingly huge diversity of bicycle lovers....

Rolling back the years

It's always a bit nerve wracking signing up for an event that you have extremely fond memories of but that due to calendar clashes you haven't been able to get to since 2005. We'd done the first three Rough Rides and each time raved over the atmosphere and in particular the Radnorshire terrain that it traverses so of course the big question was; were we going to be disappointed?

Well a huge factor is always the weather and someone up there really seems to love this event. I actually think I might now have my first suntan since 2006 - it was a scorcher! Although as Sean Kelly often says: those in the peleton always have a much better tan as they are out there nearly twice as long ;-)

The start was changed since we were last here to up on the ridge so the elbows out climb up the road was replaced by a bunch sprint across the grass to commence the numerous downs and ups that a 75km course with 7000ft of climbing can produce. 

Somewhere around the four hour mark I was genuinely pondering whether doing these long events had always hurt this much or whether I'd simply forgotten how to blot out the pain. On reflection it's probably just that I haven't actually ridden for this long since last summer. Thankfully at around the five hour mark my body remembered what it was supposed to be doing and I entered the much perkier phase which carried me to the finish for the Wilf's bean casserole that had my name on it.....

The actual run off the ridge in to the finish was also a different (and much safer) approach than 2005 and at just under six and a half hours including random stops for food, drink and just generally loving the views, was a perfect way to spend a sunny Sunday. In an age when everything seems to be changing so fast, and not always for the better, it was a pleasant surprise to find that even after a four year gap, no, we were definitely not disappointed.

Next stop for hammering myself into a bit better bike shape for the TwentyFour12 is another 7000ft of climbing but this time on a 72 mile tarmac excursion to the Shropshire Highlands Challenge. 

I am guessing that I will definitely be missing my granny ring.......

How not to prepare for the Rough Ride

The Pickford(s) Files

Last week didn't start too well when I was blissfully slurping down my breakfast smoothie and I happened to stare over at a post it note with "8th June sofabed /chairs pick up" scribbled on it. It was at this point I slipped into a blind panic as I realised that I'd booked a Wychavon Council collection of our old sofabed (currently located in the back upstairs bedroom under a pile of painting paraphernalia) and two old garden loungers (currently in the attic space of the garage under a pile of motorbike gear).

Mr M had commuted off to work and I was just about to pootle off myself so what ensued was the most comedic action-packed twenty minutes our neighbours had the unfortunate luck to behold. The garden loungers retrieval was fairly straightforward (although tricky at speed) but even I have to admit that I still cannot see how I singlehandedly got a sofabed out the bedroom, down the stairs, through the hall and across the front garden without either (a) breaking my neck or (b) destroying the house. Amazing really what a bit of blind panic can achieve when needs must.

Not ideal planning

Suffering as I am from post-Giro fatigue (basically no tanned racehorses thrashing up mountains to gawk at) I also started to plan out the next feast of eye candy only to realise that one of my favourite mountains will be happening on the day we are racing pairs at the TwentyFour12 in Plymouth.

Oh well, not being a sky plus owning techno-junkie person, I guess I'd best be figuring out how to work the (ancient) video then.

Walking the Walk

Next item of not ideal preparation was an appearance at the Midlands Master's Track League. My foot won't yet stand up to track run training so I was pencilled in to do the 2k race walk. You may think (as I did) that if you can walk then this should be fairly straightforward but noooooo there are all sorts of special ways you must walk; no lifting, legs straight etc etc and all this last minute knowledge left me in a bit of a pre-race panic.

Lucky for me there were a couple of excellent male master race walkers in our club and John kindly gave me a quick crash course in hopefully how to get round without being disqualified. Five laps of strange wiggly walking later and I'd done something else about which I previously had no clue whatsoever. Sometimes it's good to risk being a dork and just throw caution to the wind.

So with aches and pains in all sorts of places that I didn't even know I had nerve endings I felt suitably unprepared for the Rough Ride with its monster 7000ft of climbing over 75km but me and my trusty Soda survived it so stay tuned to hear all about it very shortly.