86 miles on a Sunday

The bike was serviced in rushed attempt to get some miles under the belt, late Saturday night. 6am alarm call brought me to my senses and I dressed in my mothballed Lycra and headed out into the dreary Sunday morning mist. Fortunately the first 1.5 miles was downhill to the Bristol Harbour basin where the ancient SS Great Britain was still asleep. The cold ripped through my clothes and I shivered, cursing my bad choice of early spring attire - I thought I was harder than this.

An hour later I had passed Bristol Airport and the first of 5 climbs for the day was under my belt and was starting to feel warmer, but already the winter layoff from any long distance cycling was nagging my hamstrings and calves.

The usually busy A38 was quiet for a Sunday morning, the smell of manure from the Somerset levels was quickly replaced by the plastics factory of Bridgwater. The GPS read 35.5 miles, I was feeling strong and only another 51 to go.

Incredibly Taunton appeared 40 minutes later, I had zipped along, trying to keep the speed over 20mph as much as possible, I was eating the miles and so settled into a smooth rhythm as the sun burnt off the low cloud and I began to feel real heat.

The next 32 miles to Exeter along the old road, criss crossed the M5 several times. It is downhill all the way and didn't seem to take anytime at all, I used the time to feed and drink as much as possible and enjoy the stunning Devonshire rolling hills and the flat Exe floodplain.

Everything started to go wrong just as I left the city limits of Exeter, I was on the Longdown road headed for Bridford and cycled over some glass from a broken car window, a deep cut appeared in my tyre and I heard the hiss of the inevitable puncture. It took 10 minutes to patch the tyre and fix the tube and I was off again. Something was different this time though, I felt as if I had left my legs on the side of the road and the new ones were faulty. With just over 4 hours in the saddle the journey had taken its toll and I had found my limit of cycling with no training - 76 miles. The last 10 were hell, I had nothing left and limped my way up to the fringes of Dartmoor, cursing myself for not feeding properly, biting off more than I could chew for the first ride of the season and for wearing the wrong clothes.

I moved so slowly up the 19% hill to the village of Bridford, that my Garmin didn't even register a speed. I was digging deep, trying to recall how I motivated myself across Greenland when I was in pain and wanted to stop, I turned the volume up on my iPod and screamed the lyrics out to the GooGoo Doll's 'Iris' to somehow distract myself from the pain, two ramblers walked down the hill past me laughing, they said it gets steeper round the corner....and it did, but I was determined not to walk.

The finish line appeared and I sat back on my saddle and punched my fists into the air, as if I had just won a hill stage of the Tour De France. I was over heated, dizzy and felt sick. 86.6 miles in just over five and half hours....happy days, bring on the Sunday 10th May when I repeat the ride again!

Baked Beans anyone?

A weekend off doing absolutely nothing. I had surgery on my ankle on Thursday, where the surgeon removed 2 pieces of bone that had fallen off my leg from somewhere and were stuck down in my ankle cavity. I believe the intensive kicking work I have done in swim training, dislodged these little suckers and they decided to mess around and cause me much pain over the last 3 months. Well finally they are out and resting in a specimen jar on my mantle (two white splodges on the left are the bits of bone), I have decided to have the next 2 weeks off from doing any form of exercise and to recover.

Unbelievable, I have no pain, no swelling and can more or less walk on the foot unaided. Incredible to think I just a few days ago I was under a full anaesthetic and now feel I have a new foot. I don't want to hatchet my Count before he chickens but I would say in the New Year, I will be back on track. I have a 260 mile swim planned in June and so need to focus.

Whilst browsing my favorite sites on the web for inspiration this morning, I was reminded of this jolly poem by Robert Service, I never quite know whether I fit the category or not, disconcerting sometimes.

The Men That Don't Fit In

There's a race of men that don't fit in,

A race that can't stay still;

So they break the hearts of kith and kin,

And they roam the world at will.

They range the field and they rove the flood,

And they climb the mountain's crest;

Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,

And they don't know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;

They are strong and brave and true;

But they're always tired of the things that are,

And they want the strange and new.

They say: "Could I find my proper groove,

What a deep mark I would make!"

So they chop and change, and each fresh move

Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs

With a brilliant, fitful pace,

It's the steady, quiet, plodding ones

Who win in the lifelong race.

And each forgets that his youth has fled,

Forgets that his prime is past,

Till he stands one day, with a hope that's dead,

In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed;

he has missed his chance;

He has just done things by half.

Life's been a jolly good joke on him,

And now is the time to laugh.

Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost;

He was never meant to win;

He's a rolling stone, and it's bred in the bone;

He's a man who won't fit in.

Its a roller coaster

I hate injury, it is saddening, depressing and can eat away at your confidence. Most of all I hate the way it makes me feel that I am loosing time, that each day spent waiting for my injury to heal is a day less of fitness for my final goal. I am not one to sit around and twiddle my thumbs and have probably not contributed to the healing process by being too eager to get back out there.

Everyone is telling me to enjoy the month of rest and taking things easily and dropping the intensity, and I am starting to listen and finding more time to concentrate on the things that tend to get dropped when you are training 17 hours a week.

Anyway two orthopaedic consultants next week, lots of acupuncture, massage, physio, cold and heat packs and ibuprofen and the knee, ankle and back might start to ease. Towing heavy sledges and cycling long distances with a heavy trailer is not mightily good for the body.

So this is the down and then I think about the difficulty with finding a sponsor at the moment and I go further down, but if you are like me, you believe that only by taking risks can you really feel life, you know there will be an up....soon, after all it is a roller coaster!

The photo is of my tent on Antarctica, I was stuck in it for 3 days while Katabatic winds had to blow themselves out, chunks of ice and rock the size of golf balls become airborne in 80kph winds. As each wave of wind would blow, the inside of the tent would collapse and then re-inflate, incredible that these Hillerberg tents can withstand these conditions. Just as the terror of loosing a tent in those temperatures was a real prospect and so the storm would pass and suddenly all would be calm again.

220 lengths

Last night I swam in a coached endurance session for 220 lengths of a 25m pool. Just over 2 hours of swimming front crawl and quite high level of intensity. I didn't have my buoyant wetsuit or salty sea water that I have become so accustomed to help me out. This was raw swimming monotony.

When I finished I was ravenous, sore and my back was killing me. This back trouble is starting to worry me. My Chiro and Physio say that I developing very tight hamstrings from the swimming and this is pulling on my lower back. I need to work on this fast as swim intensity increases next month. I went out for a pizza and 2 beers afterwards to chat with a friend, lots of carbo's but probably the wrong kind for recovery.

Pool swimming has become somewhat of an anathema, a sacrifice I make to the Atlantic swim Gods, I hate pool swimming, too many people, the turning after each 25m, the cramps I get in my calves from pushing off the wall to quickly, the monotony - it is so much more difficult to switch off and zone out, which is what I can do when in the sea, it is this mental displacement that enables me to swim for so long without getting bored - this is practically impossible to do in a pool.

There is only one comfort though - no sharks.

An instrument of torture

My IronMan PowerBreathe arrived yesterday. Supposedly this will increase my lung capacity by up to 15% without having to use any drugs (not that I would ever do that) so that I can become a better swimmer. I have used it a few times now and I have never felt my chest/lung muscles ache before. It is amazing - finally my own gym for my lungs, as with all things of this ilk, I have to make sure I don't over train and pull an intercostal!!

I need big lungs.com