port talbot 4 up

The last 2 weeks to Austria

Done a lot of sea swimming the week before I left but having a full on taper. From the west wales hundred to the thursday I didn’t use the bike. Which took us up nicely to the 25m tt 4 up team time trial . With 90,Pepperami and the Spaniard.

As usual everything was organised and sorted then Pepperami changed the entire plan last minute. So now, i’m not driving we are going in his van with 90 and the spainard. Escobar and tom are taking the bikes. We all arrive at the colemans garage and escobar is late. Fabulous is driving too and long neck is in with him. James sets off at warp speed and escobars t4 is feeling the strain. I think it caught fire at some point but tom dealt with it and there was no real need to stop.

So we arrive at the bank. Escobar is still bleating about his tiny engine fire but he’s late so we all help the NBCC first team away to get it together ,no time to mess about and fab,escobar,tom and long neck are rolling.

We have a while yet and slowly start to get together. Didn’t have much chance to chat to Nick or keiron or ollie. They are 6 mins behind us. James is convinced they will get nowhere near us. So off we go and onto the bank. It starts off ok and then a third of the way down the bank ben takes the lead and stops pedalling. I am third,James is second in line. I am waiting for James to take Ben over the top as we should be doing 45 mph plus down here but we aren’t . So i wait then I do it and come over the top of both of them.

The turns on the front are hard but the recoveries are easy. Until James starts coming through too hard and then I am fighting for the back wheel all the time. From the turn back I am struggling and we drop from 1 min turns to 45 seconds this seems to work better. Then James comes through far too hard and I am gone off the back.I was fuming. I shout and luckily Ben hears me. He drops into the gap and makes it manageable and pulls me back upto the other two. Some choice words . Although now I think we are all struggling. We have 4 miles to go and our average speed is 30.3 mph. We lose it and finish with an average speed of 29.9mph. With a time of 50.15 secs for the 25miles. We are stoked. We had no idea we could go that fast. Going on our 10 mtt individual times we couldn’t.But we did. We beat the Velo and were only 90 secs adrift of the NBCC dream team of Nick, Ollie,Keiron and lloydy . We finished 7th overall. Again as with the 50 m tt it was difficult for us to comprehend and still hasn’t sunk in. I think Alex and ben were the strongest then James then me. Recovery wasn’t there.Maybe a bit of that 100 left in my legs since sunday. Average power for that was245 watts. Which was a bit high for IM pace .Will aim for 230 on race day. I think I may have gone out too hard on that one.

On the drive home James and 90 were being their usual little boys selves. Saying we should post on the Velo website that the NBCC ‘B’ team beat the velos ‘A’ team. As usual they were all talk so I did it for them. You hand me a loaded gun i’ll pull the trigger. Everytime. We waited for a retort. We got a show stopper. Not from Paul but Jill. There was no way I was pursuing that one and we decided Jills comeback was a pretty good one and at the risk of things escalating we best leave it there. Nick had a laugh that Jill had stopped our little banter dead in its tracks. We were put in our place.

We stopped at Mcdonalds on the way home and I ordered filet of fish. Which was shit and I got heaps for it. I looked at what the others had had and agreed .no one orders filet of fish in mcdonalds.I always do that.

Still no passport. Have phoned up the passport people and if I drive to glasgow tomorrow I may get one for a week saturday. The race is sunday in Austria and I am supposed to be leaving tuesday. Looked everywhere.Well clearly I haven’t .This is becoming a bit serious now. I’ve looked at trip advisor and it looks like I may have a sporting chance of getting out of britain without a passport using the tunnel. I have a passport now but its not mine. Which is a whole new set of offences altogether.