Wednesday, 20 August 2014

Nearly There!

Another 3 days and I will be on the start line!!

This past week or so has been a difficult one, I'm not great at Tapering as I use exercise as a stress reliever and it keeps me sane! I have been a bit grumpy with all the pre event nerves and self doubts, I try to put on a brave face but I have always suffered from this so it's kind of a double whammy for me leading up to a big event because everything needs to stay on an even keel, for the last 10 days you just want routine with no surprises or distractions, it didn't happen that way!

The weekend's training didn't help and everything seemed to be going wrong; I picked my bike up from my normally reliable bike shop having had it serviced on Friday and went out to do my normal Danbury hills loop, this entails 3 hills climbed 4 times each and then a 20km circuit back home. We had some pretty big storms on the Thursday & Friday and the lanes were awash with gravel & grit so within 10km I had a puncture, no biggy just repaired it and got on with the hills, going down North Hill I couldn't get the the chain up into the big ring! WTF!! it's just been serviced! anyway I did another circuit then tried to fix the problem but to no avail it just wouldn't work! I completed the ride got home and tried to fix it once more but again no luck! It will have to go back to the bike shop on Monday....great!

I didn't get as much sleep as I wanted Saturday night as Nicola had one of her friends round and although she tried to be quiet as a mouse I'm a light sleeper so I woke up, not ideal. Sunday morning plans were to ride around 80km at an easy pace (using bike number 2) it was quite chilly & very windy as I went out...... I got the first puncture after 15km and the 2nd after 36km, now I only ever carry 2 tubes and 2 Co2 cannisters with me because I am not normally susceptible to punctures  so when I got the 2nd puncture there was nothing for it other than to head home and hope for the best but unfortunately when I used the 2nd Co2 cannister It didn't inflate properly so I only got about half the pressure in the tyre! Having seen loads of cyclists earlier in the ride I now didn't see any for another 15km and when I did they didn't have pumps! Anyway I made it home but was a pretty unhappy bunny the rest of the day!

The rest of Sunday was spent packing which is a huge job, cycling kit (for all weathers) for 8 rides plus stuff to wear after each stage, various chargers, gloves, sunglasses, shoes, spare parts & then the nutrition:

 Bars, gels & hydration for during each stage then recovery stuff for after the finish.
There is so much to remember that I'm bound to forget something!

So here I am with 3 days to go (and only 2 before I fly to Geneva!) quietly bricking myself and asking that question that we all ask; "why do I put myself through all this!!"

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