3 up
Triathlon Training Blog, Friday, June 27th, 2014Well, here I am sitting in Ben and heathers Winnie Bago in a service station just outside the chunnel on the french side.
Its been a torrid few weeks on the build up to Ironman Austria.
3 weeks ago I did a 3 up time trial with Alex (joe 90) and Fabulous. I had my suspicions things were going to go astray when fabulous rocks up at 5 in the morning in short shorts a t shirt that wouldn’t fit a 10 year old and one shaved leg. Did he run out of time? Is this a new look I am unfamiliar with.
I know i’ve never had my finger on the pulse when it comes to these trends. But quite frankly Fab looked ridiculous . Bear in mind, fabs scale of ridiculous is on a whole new level to ‘normal’ people.
Difficult to take fab seriously at the best of times. This ‘look’ was very difficult to comprehend.
Just when I think things couldn’t get any worse 90 turns up. Grinning like a loon with that inane smile he always wears that just makes you want to hit him…hard……because you can.
The drive up consisted of fab and I tearing 90 to shreds and asking him if he or we could sleep with his sister. All normal lads stuff. Bit building site but 90’s a soft target.
To be fair 90 just soaks it all up,never bites and has a few come backs but in the end fab and I overwhelmed him and eventually he went very quiet indeed. Deep forest silent .where you know there’s loads going on but not a sound to be heard Eerie. He ‘ll probably snap one day and slaughter a few thousand people. For the time being ,nice guy though .
I guess the most alarming thing that came out of it all was we learnt that 90 is a carpenter . This is the same guy who ,you get the impression, someone makes his sandwiches for him. Now i’m surprised 90 can tie his shoe laces unassisted. To think of him with a rip saw in his hand,even closely supervised sends a shiver down my spine. That ‘s before you even plug it in.
So we arrive at the start and In true lads fashion we do the most important thing. Do we check the bikes are all tip top and working? No. Do we go to sign on go through the race plan and check we all know the course? No
We scope out the womens teams. Disappointing. Then we double check what the likelihood of getting caught by one of them is. There’s a possible in there.
We get our numbers and go for a warm up. 90 is reliving every moment of the race we haven’t done yet. Is it nerves or shall we put it down to him just being a bell end?
Fab is up against it today .He needs a solid performance . 90 is a very good rider and i’m moving ok so fab will have to hang on. One shaved leg and all. The warm continues with me trying to avoid any sort of verbal communication with 90 and no eye contact under any circumstances.
We are off. We head down to the first roundabout and its going well and onto the dual carriageway. I decide to change the order we are in to suit Fabulous and it works a little better. At least I think that was what he was trying to say as he wiped the vomit off his mouth. We are going well and into the second lap. We are caught by another team, then another,So we haven’t won it.
We go into disarray as we come onto the dual carriageway the second time and have to slow down to regroup. Fab is making an excellent effort but Alex is coming through a bit fast at times that makes life incredibly hard the guy whose just come off the front and now and then I had to give fab a little nudge to close the gap . He was very grateful. I could tell by the way he said ‘fuck you’
That was ok and we are going well. Onto the third lap and the 30 miles comes up. Now seeing as this was a national championship you would’ve thought someone would’ve mentioned that the course had been changed and was now a 36 mile 3 up team time trial. So we press on. Its all going a bit slow for me so just to piss 90 off I come over the top of him to get us moving. This goes against the grain with 90. He likes order,everything as it should be. Pissed him off a treat .Bonus.
With 2 miles to go the extra weight of the carpet on his one leg became too much for fab and he clipped 90’s wheel and parted company with his bike. I’m not sure what his plan was after that. I circled around and fabulous looks like jones from dads army. Fauna and flora everywhere. He wipes the turf from his vomit stained face ,he seems ok and we carry on.
If you thought coming over the top of 90 pissed him off having his wheel clipped sent him apoplectic. He was fucking seething. A quiet seething,akin to a tantrum you’d expect from a 6 year old. Except 90 had failed to take into account nobody cared if he was happy or not,or even there.
He disappeared at the finish and we didn’t see him for a while. We just avoided being chicked.That was the main thing.
I went for a 45 min run off the bike .It had got quite warm now. Took a bit to get into but went ok.
When I got back to the van things were….shall we say …..tense. 90 had expressed his opinion on fabulous impromptu aerobatics display and Fabulous wasn’t in the mood for it. They were sat opposite sides of the van ,backs to each other,arms crossed in a ‘i’m not talking to him 8 year old stylee’ . It was amusing and I did my level best to stir things up even more. But I think fab was toying with the idea of giving 90 a clip which would’ve made the drive back very awkward indeed. So I had a word with him and told him to do it. He didn’t.
On the whole a positive performance with, what is now considered normal, turns of events and non-standard operating procedure eventualities. Another great day at the races with the girls
