Frustration

Frustrating day today. Beth's been at work 7:30am through 8pm (ouch) and it's been a glorious day, no wind not to cold, dry, perfect for training. Weather is forecast to deteriorate so I don't know if I'll get out tomorrow and next weekend it's Amelia's Birthday party and then Beth's working again so no chance of a ride. To make it worse Half Mile had us lined up for a Sunday Sportive round Stratford. Bummer. 12 weeks to go and I'm no where near fit enough. Where can I find some time?

Chippy in pain

Sunday 26th I planned a big ride. Peaches, Ed, Half Mile and Mark were all up for tagging along for the hard route to Chipping Campden and the easy route back



Before we set off Ed cried off with a sore back, from falling on the ice at the local rink whilst trying to impress the girls and Mark cried off with a chest cold, leaving the three of us. Half Mile led the way, but at the top of Loxley hill (about 15km in) he declared himself wiped out and headed home (to be fair he only got back from NYC on Thursday) leaving two of us.

Peaches and I headed on to Ilmington and the big climb over to Chipping Campden. Although I led the way up the climb at its steepest point I did glance down at the speedo which was reading a remarkable 1.3kph. Remarkable only in that I stayed vertical! We stopped in Chippy and had a snack and recovered some strength before heading on out over Dover’s Hill, another climb much more difficult than I remembered it. The descent down the other side is the scariest I have ridden. 14% and about a mile long, I hit 63kph with the brakes full on (and I mean full on), having watched Lance Armstrong in the middle of the peloton, descending at 103kph puts it all in perspective. Those guys have balls of steel. Incidentally, 63kph is the same speed that Jack Bobridge sprinted off the front of the peloton at on day 4 of the Tour Down Under. How do they do that? I mean even accounting for the lighter/better bike, fitness and technique, that’s a remarkable speed from a standing start. And to keep it up for 148km is jaw dropping.

In total I managed just over 90km on Sunday, in just over 4 hours (actually 3:17 cycling plus breaks). These guys did the same distance in 1 hr 42 minutes, although admittedly on a flat course http://www.tourdownunder.com.au/2009/?q=node/266. Anyway, about 70km in Peaches was getting increasingly weary and told me to carry on. So I left on my own. Stupidly, I thought I’d time trial my way home, burnt all my energy in the next 10k and was grateful to tag on the wheel of some bloke on a top of the range Trek just outside Warwick. But he was fresh and having made the effort to catch him I couldn’t keep up, so I was glad to see him turn off ahead of me. He wasn’t very friendly and generally I find that with roadies, they don’t care for other riders. By contrast mountain bikers are the opposite (I’m sure there are exceptions) and always seem willing to stop and chat and compare scrapes and crashes.
By the time I got home I was wiped out, so I skipped spin today and drove to work. Guilty but my legs ache. Peaches dropped in for coffee when he got home and I did reflect that in terms of his training for L2P he is way ahead of where I was at the same stage 2 years ago when I started training for the end to end. It took me 4 months to ride my first 100km. But I do need to find my legs by June. There’s no way I could ride 500km in 4 days the way I feel at the moment. I’m hoping its just because I overdid it at the gym last week, but I have had a wake up call.

Brief but painful

Friday 23rd January 2009 Gym 2km row, 20* 1 minute sprints on static bike, some upper body weights, ouch. Office party tonight. Boy do I need a drink!

No Train

No train. The cycling cognoscenti reading this will see my header for what it is. A witty pun on my ability to actually leave the house on a bike and train for the London to Paris ride against the “train” that the pro teams get going on the run in to the end of a race, to lead their sprint man to the line. Or not.

For a blog about training, I seem to spend a lot of time writing about why I didn’t actually get out and ride, which if nothing else, as I mentioned before, at least serves to keep my lethargy fixated in my mind. And make me feel bad. Actually, its not for want of trying and I had expected to write about my lack of action again this weekend.

Beth worked Saturday and Sunday so I hadn’t planned to get out. So it was with mixed emotions that I watched, Ed, Peaches and Half Mile set off across the car park on Saturday morning for a 50km spin in glorious sunshine without me.

In anticipation I had done two big gym session Thursday and Friday. Thursday core work, Friday I did some punishing reps on the static bike, 30 minutes hill climb reps followed by 15 minutes sprint reps, for which my quads didn’t thank me on Saturday, as they screamed every time I tried to climb the stairs. I also made a point of cycling to work as often as I could last week, 3 days, which amounts to about 30km in total. And, as it happens Beth finished work early on Sunday, giving me the opportunity of an hour’s sunshine before dark. I whipped out the fixie, got changed and shot off towards Beausale with a spring in my step (pedal?) and with the Kings of Leon coming in my ears (©ChorleyFM) to push me on, thankful for the opportunity of a bonus ride. A spring which was soon lost as I hit the first hill and realised that bikes have gears for the same reason cars have power steering. You can ride without them but it’s a helluva lot easier with.

Joining the Coventry Road to head out towards Kenilworth I hadn’t yet got into my stride when a teenage boy in a duffle coat astride a mountain bike with big knobbly tyres passed me with some speed and, I thought, too much glee in his face. Of course this was a complete affront to my lycra clad roadie sensibilities, so I put the hammer down, caught him up and couldn’t resist shouting “look, no gears” as I sailed past. What a flapjack. Could I be any more childish or immature? I then had to ride as fast as I could to get away from him, so I didn’t look like a complete tool, if he caught me. Although he probably thought as much anyway. Why do I do these things? At least it gave me something to think about as I struggled up the hill to Leek Wootton. Behaviour like this makes me grateful to work for a large multinational. If I worked for myself, I think I’d have left by now, citing personal differences. I can imagine ringing myself up and telling me that I can no longer work alongside me, because I’m such a tool and being told not to come back to collect my things. I can see me gossiping about myself by the coffee machine, discussing all the stupid things I say. And giving myself a bad appraisal.

Anyway, despite my stupidity I managed 26km before dark through Beausale and Norton Lindsey on a lovely bright, but cold winter’s day. I reckon each click on the fixie is worth two on a derailleur enhanced bike, so I was well pleased with myself and came home full of adrenaline and pumped on endorphins (which is probably what made me get the vacuum out). I’m booked in to spin on Monday too. So all in all I’ve done quite a lot to keep my base fitness up but its not the same as road miles under the belt.

Of course the big news of the weekend wasn't about me (or the fact our boiler packed up) but Beth’s article in the Guardian about her experience of losing Tom http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/jan/17/experience-sudden-infant-death-syndrome.

This is of course ultimately what this blog is about. She wrote the piece herself and it has been well received. I have nothing but admiration for her honesty and bravery. And to cap that, she brought a bloke back from the dead at work on Sunday. His heart had stopped and she administered CPR to restart it. Blimey. And here’s me moaning about not getting an opportunity to ride my bike. She is some bird. Keep it in perspective eh?

So, as The Bees said: Chicken! Pay the monkey back! You can sponsor me here: http://www.justgiving.com/craigmorrisfsid


Thanks for reading.

Not much to blog about so I haven’t made the effort to blog. Doesn’t seem much point in blogging “I did nothing, again”, but now I know I have some readers (hello CU) I guess I should make the effort to keep you all entertained. Perhaps I’ll just post some jokes up here instead, how’s this for starters: So I got home, and the phone was ringing. I picked it up, and said 'Who's speaking please?' And a voice said 'You are.'

Blogging does of course have the effect of exposing any activity and generating relevant feelings of guilt, so it does serve a purpose to get me up and out on the bike. Especially whilst the weather is so brutal (more of that later).

I hadn’t planned to get out this weekend (10th and 11th) due to various family commitments although the fact that I had a throat made from razor blades all weekend meant I was disinclined to move from the sofa anyway . Peaches put me to shame by completing 85km on Saturday and a further 35km on Sunday.

I did however cycle to work through all the bad weather last week (except Thursday when I was in London, so I missed spin) and lived to regret it. I rode home so fast on Friday evening that I burnt my face off. Yes, really. It was so cold that when I woke up on Saturday morning, my eyes and lips had swollen, I aged about 10 years and my skin, where it had been exposed, completely lacked moisture, causing Beth, in her sympathetic fashion to compare me to Sandstorm. Sadly not a mighty testosterone fuelled Gladiator but the sexually frustrated baddy from the Mighty Boosh. At least I can make a nice pine table.


I have had to use gallons of moisturiser to get back my usual youthful stunning complexion (if you’re familiar with underage alcoholic psoriasis sufferers).

There has been some relevant activity to shout about though. I have the raffle tickets printed, which is to be my main fundraising activity. I figure this to be less painful for people in these straitened times, but I’m still going to wait until payday before I pounce. First prize is a rather sexy little 8mp Panasonic camera, second prize £200 of Dixons/Curry’s vouchers and third a framed print from Eyevine (check them out: http://www.eyevine.com/ Big up the Crossy Crew).
Beth has also written a piece about her experience of SIDS for the Guardian which is to be printed in the magazine this weekend 17th January. Please buy it and use the emotions generated when reading it to rouse yourself and your friends in to sponsoring me in Tom’s memory (http://www.justgiving.com/craigmorrisfsid ). Thanks!

Spinning circles

Edward has bought himself a new helmet and some overshoes. Truly the cycling bug has bitten (although his enthusiasm may have been helped by the pictures of Rebecca Romero and Victoria Pendleton, both naked, in this week’s Cycling Weekly). To try them out (the new kit, not the naked cyclists) we were due to take a spin around Beausale together. But he, being a teenage boy, failed to get out of bed in time, so I took a spin on my fixie instead. It was a bright fresh morning, freezing again with thick ice covering some of the roads. I was only out for 45 minutes but was glad of the endorphin rush and the fresh air.
Monday morning brought more freezing temperatures, so I dug my mountain bike out, thinking fat knobbly tyres would be more protection against the ice. A wise move. Fat tyres enabled me to take my route to work along the canal towpath. It’s a while since I’ve done this and I had forgotten how pleasant it is. A sprinkling of snow covered the frost causing my wheels to crunch beneath me, an orange sun filled the sky ahead of me and glistened on the frozen water of the canal. I had also forgotten how much like hard work it is turning knobbly tyres and low MTB gears. But I enjoyed it never the less.
I think my MTB only came out twice last year, once for the Rough Ride (http://www.roughride.co.uk), which despite the fact that I moaned continuously for the 5 hours it took us to complete, I thoroughly enjoyed, especially the fast singletrack descent to the finish line and once for a spin around Kenilworth bridleways with Peaches to break in his new MTB (which he bought from me….).
So, in the last four days I’ve ridden my gazelle like road bike, rocket like singlespeed (man and machine welded in zen like oneness) and my full suspension mountain bike. Who says I can’t justify them all? Here’s to spinning circles, whatever the dynamics of the bike.

I came home along the canal, in the dark. Night riding is a big thing in MTB circles but it has never appealed to me. Now I know why. Its really scary!

7500km

7500km. Seven thousand five hundred kilometres exactly is what my odometer read when I felt the bump bump bump of the first puncture on my road bike. Today was a cold, damp day but I’d had a pleasant enough ride. I had thought to head out to Canons Ashby but time didn’t allow. I still fancied the fast descent off Burton Dassett hills into Farnborough though, so I thought I head down that way and then circumvent the bottom of Burton Dassett before heading back along the main road from Warwick to Banbury (discounting the M40!) in a quick 20km sprint. So far so good.

Climbing Burton Dassett was treacherous, slippy under wheel, with a hard frost still covering the ground at the top and a close freezing fog. However the sun trying to burn through from above and the silence that fog engenders made for actually quite pleasant riding. The descent into Farnborough took me out of the fog and I guess because it’s east facing the frost had melted too, meaning I didn’t need to back off the speed.

I hadn’t been this way before. The route requires you to circumnavigate around Farnborough Hall, which the pretty village presumably serviced at one time. I hadn’t banked on another climb though although I was rewarded with a steep descent into Molington for which my caution was rewarded by a gravel strewn hairpin half way down. Still, dreams of alpine descents filled my head. As I turned onto the main road from Warmington I headed up a lengthy but shallow climb and it was just as I got into my stride at the top that the puncture hit. It was to get worse from herein. I txted Beth to say I’d be late, whipped the wheel and tyre off, found the offending thorn and promptly snapped it off, leaving the heel of the thorn buried in the rubber, to puncture again. After struggling for 20 minutes to remove it I had the bright idea of leaving it there and sanding back the sharp edge with the sandpaper from my puncture repair kit, to at least get me home, where better repairs could take place.

By now I was starting to get cold (despite the magnificent long sleeve Rapha top Beth bought me for Christmas which is easily the best bit of bike kit I have ever owned, if not the best item of clothing full stop)
as the temperature was barely above freezing.
Anyway, this seemed to work so I slipped in a new inner tube and prepared to use my CO2 canister inflator. When I bought my fixie for commuting on, Halfords kindly gave me £90 to spend on accessories. Now, £90 is a lot of money, but of course most of the stuff Halfords sell is crap (*personal opinion) and because the voucher only had a few days t run I bought loads of stuff I didn’t need (including the worst bike computer ever, which packed up first time it rained) but I was chuffed to get the inflator. No more carrying a pump for me, just a handy little canister of compressed air and a removable valve. Easy. Except I couldn’t get it to work. So after a further 20 minutes (by now an hour had passed) I gave up and rang the emergency services (Beth) to come and get me. Only to find my phone was nearly out of battery, so I had about 30 seconds to explain my position and hope she could find me. Luckily she did, but by which time I was seriously cold, the sweat on my body haven frozen (not really). The car thermometer confirmed an outside temperature of 2 degrees centigrade (36F). Humiliated and embarrassed we trundled home. It took me a further 20 minutes to remove the remaining thorn from the tyre. I’m sure I don’t need to spell out the lessons learned.

Still, if it’s another 7500km until my next puncture I’ll be happy enough. Happy New Year.