the run up to wales

After the long course I was back upto task swimming ¾ times a week upped the running to 3 times. A typical week would be ;sea swim monday morning,turbo on the bike monday night,hill sprints run tuesday morning,pool swim with ollie tuesday night. Wednesday was a rest day. Thursday morning was a long run upto 18 miles followed by a sea swim thursday night with fabulous etc. friday morning turbo with fab interval run with ben griffths friday night, saturday tempo bike with a few of the boys sunday z2 bike alone.

On one particular swim on a thursday with fab and the boys I decided it was an excellent ideal to tie my new van keys around the dogs collar. That was , of course the last I saw of them.

Out of the sea with ben the dog swimming out to greet me. GREAT. The boys helped to look but the keys have gone. I’ve had the van 10 days. Escobar ,lee and fab stayed back while we wait for the aa. The beauty of losing your keys at fresh east is that there is no mobile phone reception , my phone is in the van anyway. So escobar drives me up to the top of the hill and we phone from there. The van still has all my kit in it from austria, bike ,discs the lot. There is no way it is being left there. The aa guy turns up and is quite a cool customer. He gets me back to mums for 10 30 . thanks to escobar and fab for waiting with me.

360 quid for a new set of coded keys. Thats not a remote set btw ,they were an extra 180 just a normal key . Expensive swim that. New ecu whatever the hell that is. Still the key guy is really friendly too. Curious that.

2 weeks later I go back to the fresheast swim session and jan is there and i’m chatting to her and tell her the key story. She then says they weren t a set of fiat keys were they. They were. She said a set had been placed on a rock next to the pay and display machine and had been there all week. You seriously, cannot make this stuff up. Anyway the keys were no longer there . They wouldn’t work now anyway as the mysterious ecu had been changed.gutted

That weekend escobar , scotty and tony kroll go out for a mix up ,tony is one hell of a rider. First season after a big hip operation and he’s going at a pace that is making us all feel uncomfortable. Z2 ride is gone after mile 2 . tony only has one pace , tonys pace and its well into my z3 . I’d done 25 miles alone before i’d met these boys so it was a tough day that ,what will be the mantra of the summer sessions, soon degenerated into a road race. I hung on for the first 25 with the boys then mixed it up with them for the next 25 and blew the ride apart. We regrouped a few times ,going up st brides out of saundersfoot was balls to the wall and kept the hammer down into tenby . Kept pushing and met them all back at feel good inc. it was a good ride. a hard 85 miler for me. good riding though.

The following weekend the long absent NB(the emperor) promised to come out for a ride. A lot of nbcc turned up. There was fab,escobar,long shanks,officer dibble, paul the (hammer)luger, pete (the preacher) arnold, lee (the shagger)brazier to name but a few. Off we went from feel good inc. it quickly dengenerated into a road race. Dibble being the main perpetrator, I helped a little bit. Then it was a free for all. But no one was dropped. The line was spread taught but they all hung on. A few boys laid out their table today. The shagger held on as did the hammer. The days of catching the hammer for 2 mins in the first 5 miles of a 50 m tt are long gone. Be lucky to catch him for 2 mins at all. Same for the shagger. First season ,less than a year ago 40 fags a day and a 6 pack of stella a night. Brilliant.
The emperor wasn’t impressed but joined in in the end and his attack split the field and gave dibble something to chew on. I was pretty much racing now as we regrouped and attacked for every town sign. I made a gap that wasnt there between fab and escobar for one sprint, fab was furious.lol. Dibble didn’t show too much towards the latter part of the ride . I attacked off the ridgeway and had escobar and the preacher with me. We stayed away to take the pembroke sign as the group bore down on us and we all finished at feel good inc. for cucumber sandwichs and lashings of ginger beer. Another good day in the saddle.

Last weekend I went out and did 45 with fabulous and the emperor and the shagger. The shagger was very below par and spent the next 2 days in bed. Man flu. I hit the front on castlemartin straight and pulled the group along. The emperor asked what power I was shifting and it was around 300 watts. He said there was no way as he was only doing 240 on my wheel. This actually pissed me off no end. He went onto say my power meter must be faulty. Which didn’t help the situation . Fabulous reckoned compared to his meter my readings were about right. We dropped the shagger in a heap at the shop and carried on. I went about my 50 m race pace from pembroke to tenby and dropped them. .the emperor stopped off at penally fab and I carried on back towards pembroke.

Just before lydstep fabulous stopped dead screaming like a little baby. It seemed a wasp had flown into his mouth and stung him. This amused me no end. Until he said he might be allergic ,he could feel the sting still in there and I would have to get the sting out.

Now picture this. Two lycra clad cyclists standing by the side of the road. One 65kgs in his 40s the other early 20’s 85 kilos and a bit of a unit. The diminutive 40 year old has got his hand up to the knuckles in the other ones mouth and is trying to push it in further. Wtf would you make of that if you saw it. Cue gambo and jimmy clarkson. I’m not sure they knew where the fuck to look. They did look uncomfortable. Not half as uncomfortable as I felt standing there with my hand in someone elses face trying to scrap a sting off the roof of his mouth. Now, I like fab and I wouldn’t want him to die because of a bee sting. But putting my hand in his mouth was not what I had in mind for my afternoons entertainment. Mercifully for all concerned I got the sting out using the arm of fabs sunglasses. I raced on to the next shop to grab some anti histamines and we rode back steadily to the shop. Fab did look a bit puffy around the chops. Was that from the sting or having a fist in his mouth . I somehow felt violated,sullied even and went to bleach my hands before I ate anything.

I’ve had two weeks of feeling great on the build up to wales the last two weeks have been patchy. I’ve been drinking a lot more water than normal and coming off caffeine this week has hit me harder than I thought it would. Still 9 days to go. DJ will be very hard to beat . I’ve got a better swim but his bike is as good if not better than mine and so is his run and he’s in my age group this year. Rob Dye ,same swim,same bike,better run. Only thing going against him is he’s a first timer. Slacky ,another dark horse this year but not to be ignored. Aled Smith had a very good long course and could go under 11 which puts him in the mix. Long shanks too is not to be discounted. Its going to be very tight this year.