11 | June | 2007

Well I thought that “ride to Macclesfield, do a 13 mile sponsored walk with the mum-in-law and then ride back again” would be a piece of cake. It wasn’t. First of all, I set off late yesterday morning to get to Kath’s at 8:30am so I had to ride at triathlon speed (see previous post) to make it on time.

I made it on time, but it hurt more than I wanted it to. Not only that but I was pulling a few sketchy manoeuvres through the city centre…pavements, red lights, trams…oh well.

Once we’d met up with Kath’s friends at Tegg’s Nose we were off across what seemed like the entire National Park. Up Shutlingsloe, nearly falling off the other side, up Shining Tor (which would be ace for a fell race – perhaps it is) then back up to the top of Tegg’s Nose. 13.1 miles in total and it was very tough indeed. The temperature was in the 80’s and I had to carry this nasty, narrow-strapped rucksack into which Kath had put a load of butties, water, a flask, camera and I’m sure there were a few half bricks in there for good measure. Still, it was for a good cause and it made a change from the usual training activities. Those “more mature” walkers can shift a bit too!

Simon and I have finally booked the B&B in Switzerland and the flights. So we’re all set, apart from the car hire.

We’re staying here: http://www.chaletheidi.com/

It had to be called “Heidi” didn’t it?

Before that though, I’ve the small matter of Mountain Mayhem the weekend after next (already!). I agreed to take part in this a few weeks ago in a mixed team of 5. We’re all going with families and tents and barbecues…should be a laugh. It will be quite a treat, not solo-ing at a 24 hour event for a change, and I’m looking forward to dragging Budge out of his tent at 3 am to do a lap.

I’m hoping to (and should be able to) ride more than 250 miles this week, plus 3 off-road runs. The dog’s been weighed by the vet and he’s 2 kilos overweight! So I need to run nowadays to get him sorted out.

With any luck this week will also include a trip to Llandegla on Saturday with Michael where we may do the cheeky off-piste bits up in the hills above the visitor’s centre.

A load of us from work entered the Cheshire Triathlon relay some months ago. It was great. My team (Rob, Wendy and me) WON the thing. We rule. Nobody in the relay event was faster than me on the (very painful) 20K bike course, nobody was faster than Rob on the run and Wendy was fourth in the swim. Like I said, we rule.Some of those tri lads don’t like being passed by a bloke wearing MTB shoes on a ‘cross bike either…one of them (riding a Specialized carbon something or other, complete with tri bars and aero seatpost) proper saw the red mist and piled into the trans area right on my rear wheel and then crashed into the kerb, skidding across the tarmac on his clean-shaven sinewy knees. Bless.

For some reason I forgot to mention this sooner, even though our VICTORY happened 2 weeks ago. To be honest, I was more chuffed with getting around the MTL on the singlespeed in less than five and a half hours!Aside from that (and I’m being careful not to come across as a patronising tosser here), one of the best things about this was the number of normally sedentary people at work who worked really hard over the past 12 or so months to get themselves into shape to avoid looking daft on the day. Everybody gave a good account of themselves and loads have since bought bikes and are continuing the training. A few have even entered a full triathlon. Life changing stuff. Not only that, the mouthy gits who were saying that they were going to “destroy Jase” have also crawled back under a rock 😉

Results are on here (somewhere):

http://www.fun2tri.co.uk/cheshire-new/results.htm