the last week

Tired today. Made the effort to go down the centre to do turbo with ollie. Managed 35 mins just not hitting the numbers so span out to 10 miles and fucked it off. Was busy down there though and ollie is doing ironman uk this weekend.

Sunday. Up early and off to Cardiff met the Cardiff tri guys in the pissing rain at heathers. We procrastinated for quite a while ,fiddled with bike bits putting off the inevitable and headed out in the rain. It didn’t ease off. I took some big pulls on the front and was rinsing a fair amount of power for sustained bursts .Heathers grinning little face was there stuck to my wheel everytime. It took power of 360 watts breaks to drop her and it turned into a 20 mile interval setYet another puncture for me at 15 miles. I was quite impressed how quickly it took me to change it but did feel mildly disappointed when nobody passed comment.

. We stopped at a cool little coffee shop in llantwit run by a guy called dave who used to race in Europe. Nice guy , nice stop and no one was keen for the 60 miles planned so we headed back in very much the same fashion as we headed out. A road race/unstructured interval session. I couldn’t train up here often the roads are too busy and I ended up racing the cars into Cardiff . Like being a courier again.Very irresponsible. Quite literally like a dog chasing cars up the road yapping at the wheels. No one was impressed with that either.

Meet up with more Cardiff tri later in the afternoon for a sea swim at jacksons bay which is in barry island which isn’t as good as I remembered it as a kid. Since queen Victoria is dead now. I did not want to do this swim as I was tired and going for a sea swim in a place for the first time where u swim out to a buoy where the ‘current can be quite strong’ is always advisable. Not content with doing the 1.2 k swim once we did it twice.Not happy with my swimming at the moment.. Long drive home and not the early night I could do with.

Saturday

Another fantastic lie in till 5.30. Gareth Powell, as prompt as ever was on the doorstep for 6 and fabulous wasn’t too far behind him. We headed out to carmarthen and back. Fab took some big turns on the front on the way out as did i. Gareth did a big stint heading out of st clears. This made fabulous very happy indeed and he vocalised it or was it weaponised ?one or the other or ,actually both. . I think that was a turning point in the ride that fab didn’t want to recover from . He was so happy when I carried on to carmarthen track and started doing laps . He looked on . Death stare? Quite a long way removed from happy .if it started raining now it would’ve been perfect. All of this of course stirred gareth and I on to greater heights as we went around and around and around.each lap increased our mirth as it was inversely proportion to fabulous, what would turn out to be, quite a spectacular downward slide.

To add to fabs fantastic disposition he had a puncture in the park. This took an eternity to change as he first put a tube in whose valve wasn’t long enough for the rim section.Me riding up and down the steep grass banking helped him a lot I feel during this difficult time. By now ,seething, I would say is the word. We carried on undaunted. About 2 miles out fab finally went into a downward free fall . who saw that coming? We crawled home. Fab was talking cabs and trains. To help him along gareth kept mentioning how good he was feeling and he really wanted to pour it on. Like a playful puppy gareth was full of energy. This seemed to make fabulous quite angry for reasons we couldn’t fathom as we laughed and joked and rode effortlessly away from him. He did look in a shit state to be fair which improved my humour no end and added to the party,festival atmosphere of the reminder of the ride.

Up the hill to the sporting chance and down the other side to kilgetty . Fab was on the front now as if we left him on the back he would fall behind. This didn’t seem to please him either. The up shot of this was no one noticed for a long time that gareth was now missing in action . I turned around and went to look for him. There he was 2 miles back puncture. He had texted me to tell us to carry on he would sort it. I’m pretty sure, as gareth is extremely mechanically minded that he thought he could fix it with no spare inner tube(which he had given to fab) and no gas canisters(which he had given to fab) So I handed him my spare and my canister. He continued to wear the blank uncomprehending expression on his face that he had on when I arrived.as if all the world was a mystery to him as he emerged into it at the dawn of time itself.A stranger in a strange land . It was a bit like explaining colour to a blind person. I changed his tube for him he clucked around played with his phone a bit and I assured him I’d be there to do it for him in IM wales. Gareth wears a blank expression better than anyone I know. It is a gift. We got back to the dock 70 miles done .even with the trip back at 17.5 mph. Fabs full neural net meltdown didn’t end there as he sat in his car outside the house staring blankly into space for a good half hour. It was…uncomfortable