Enthusiasm. Willingness to get out of bed early and do something. Keeping to your plans. It’s funny how easily and qiuckly all these things slip and slide off one’s consciousness, leaving behind apathy, laziness and a shrinking comfort zone… 

It was quite hard after the Cristalp to keep things going in readiness for the Three Peaks. I was tired and I’d had a really hard time pushing myself though the training – the weather this year has made it harder but even if the weather had been fine the whole thing would have been punishing anyway (it wouldn’t be worthwhile training if it was easy though would it?)

I’m not saying that I didn’t enjoy riding the MTL twice, or the MTL on a singlespeed, or riding the PBW south for 70-odd miles, or riding 2 trail centres in one day and all the roads and lanes in between, or riding for 6 hours on a weekday evening or trying to kill myself on the turbo trainer when it’s sunny outside, or getting up at 6am to go for a road ride in the rain, or feeling hungry for 6 months solid, or not seeing much of my friends or family or declining rides with friends in favour of a head-down pedal mashing session or a repeated climb up a bloody big hill… Honest to God, I enjoyed the training. For me it’s the biggest part of the challenge…but it’s nice to have a choice and to not feel the pressure of “having to get the mileage/altitude in my legs”. For now anyway. The new arrival (due end of October) means I’ll be more limited for time for “a bit” so maybe I’ll go running more. In fact, sod it. I’ll go running more for definate. Maybe I’ll enter a race or something….;-)

But the fun riding and the “hard” riding won’t happen until the mojo comes back. Luckily, I have a cunning plan….