the bakers ring piece ,some african bambarter and the day francos world fell apart part one
Triathlon Training Blog, Tuesday, August 25th, 2015On the Sunday did the previous days ride in reverse and rode the 70 miles back to Mumbles to pick up the van. This was most certainly a solid z2 ride . And as luck would have it the wind that was against me coming down yesterday had done a 180 and was against me today too. The only surprise is why i’m surprised .Tired to day but kept the average power up at 200 watts. Bumped into Reuban i think his name was. Nice guy and cycled with him for a bit for the last few miles. He is heading up to the cotswolds next week too. Thankfully he told me the race was on sunday . i thought it was saturday.
Rest day Monday and into the taper/recovery week proper. Tuesday pool and easy turbo easy run . Was going to race wednesday but couldnt face it and the weather was terrible again.
Thursday was back in the pool with the tri lot that session went well followed by an hour on the turbo sweet spot session
Friday morning skipped fabulous s turbo session and did an hr alone 15 secs on 15 off at 150 ftp times 7 4 sets of that 4 minutes between sets.
Friday afternoon there was a lot of running around. Decided to head up today to the cotswolds classic half IM try to avoid the saturday traffic. This turned out to be a mistake . As the weather was so bad it seems all the townies had decided to leave early. It took over 2 hrs to get to swansea. By this time i had lost the will to live and had decided to call it a day. Did actually turn off the m4 but then turned back around and headed on. the traffic got no better.6 hours it took. Didnt go on a run after that funnily enough
Saturday. Tent up and its carry on camping. On face value this is a great spot the campsite is very close to T1 (walking distance) The mighty windy milla is here and we go about setting everything up bikes gear and the usual pre race prep.Filling gel flasks , disc or no disc(went for disc despite the weather report) Then a dinner invite .Heather ,Ben and MR Fabulous are in the building. Meeting them at 7 in some pub called the wheatsheaf or golden lion which is what all the pubs seem to be called around here.
Upon arrival ,in the rain, Fabulous is nowhere to be seen. It appears he has gone to the petrol station 3 miles up the road to get fuel. He takes over an hour . Seems he diligently followed the sat nav to the wheatsheaf on the way back. Unfortunately he went to the wheat sheaf in a different county and ended up 40 miles away. At what point it dawned on him that the drive back was greater than 10 times the drive there is , as yet , unclear. He pressed on unhindered anyway.happily listening to his abba gold cd that is a permanent fixture in his cd player
Meanwhile back in the pub things have taken quite an unexpected turn.Tonight, of all nights , it seems this tiny pocket that shall be forever england , is the set chosen for an African bambarter night. This is, on the whole, reasonably random.But the evening didnt stop giving there. The fantastic unexpected twist was that the night was being held by the local christian society who had just come back from some missionary work in Uganda. Ben simply couldnt believe his luck and what Fab was going to make of it was anyones guess.The room is now filling with overweight do gooders dressed in full african tribal ‘evening wear’
Ben asked if we could move tables. Somewhere along the course of this particular conversation the intent was turned on its head. Clearly the owner simply couldnt comprehend that we may not want tribal beats bongo drums and chanting over dinner. He walked ben back to our table and assured us that no one would take our table and we could stay as long as we wanted. Ben sat down defeated and polished off his pint like he was trying to drown in it.
The world held its breath. In strode Mr Fabulous like a spanish matador clearly agitated by his self imposed detour. Even he struggled to assimilate the scene that greeted him as he entered the bar. ‘What the fucking hell is this mickey mouse horse shit and who are these wankers? ‘ i think was what he said. In the first instance this was all too much for him and he plonked himself down. Gathered his thoughts and not to be out done promptly disappeared.
Fabulous entry to the bar take 2.
15 minutes later a much different fabulous strode into the bar in full african tribal dress with a blackened out face a fly whisk and ,although you would think this was quite a show stopper in itself, your immediate attention was not fabulous himself but the white bearded goat on a lead he had with him. So your first question was not.who has he assaulted and stripped to get the dress but where the fuck did he find a goat.
The holy joes i think, well most of them anyway must have thought fabulous was the stripper. The head honcho female vicar however was having none of it and could see trouble brewing and tried to nip this little episode in the bud. She confronted fabulous and his goat as Fab was ramming buffalo wings and sweet potato down his chops taken from their buffet . As u would expect with Fab he was having none of it. Gate crasher or no this african pagan tribesman and his goat were staying at this little soiree and if he wanted to sacrifice a goat to his gods over the pool table he was going to exercise his right to do it. . An argument ensued,broke out ruptured. Fab put across quite a reasoned argument about religious tolerance for other creeds and their beliefs and as they tried to man handle him , a feat that was futile and beyond them , to the door he stated that this was in sighting religious hatred and him and his soon to be sacrificed goat who he had dubbed ‘arthur’ quite literally fought their corner. At this point exactly what you dont need exactly when you dont need it. Arthur got wind of fabs plans for him and the purpose for his invite.and his imminent demise.Arthur went beserk quite frankly and made a last gasp bid for freedom. to witness a goat fleeing for its life is something i would recommend to anyone to experience.this development seemed to catch a now ranting fab somewhat by surprise.arthur was going through some very strong,forthright motions of finding an exit from his current situation.he made a new one in the end and was gone into the rain a much happier fellow.this of course happened with all the chaos mayhem and turmoil u would associate with such a venture. Fabulous made eye contact. making eye contact with fab is not usually the favoured course of action in any situation. it tends to flip a switch and send him into overdrive.his eyes were imploring the question across the crowded chaotic room ‘ what the fuck is wrong with the goat?’As if this were the only inexplicable development in the recent turn of events.then the switch tripped and fab went into over drive. That fucking goat is totally unreasonable he shouted . that was our clue to follow arthurs example and make for the exit
I have no doubt fab will be the head of his own religious sect one day, if he isnt already. We left Fab shouting the virtues of love thy neighbour forgive ness and tolerance and trying to start an ethical conversation about what right the christain society have to impose their religion on his african brothers. Race day tomorrow
They dont need us to go there and build a well. They have been there for thousands of years and have got the ‘finding water’ situation pretty much sussed. I did some sailing with a junior doctor a few years ago who had spent a couple of years over there. You build a well he said , they dont look after it a year later it is useless. Its the african mindset you have to change not the infrastructure . was his opinion. Which i understood. He had done some cool things including going to Ulaan bataar mongolia buying a horse for 45 us dollars and going on a jolly for a month on the mongolian plains.like you do. Good sailing companion too.
