Not me. The girls. both of them had been vomiting furiously since Thursday and as a result the lack of nutrition started to give them some real problems yesterday.

We spent the whole day in the local children’s hospital, Eleanor started to feel a bit better late in the afternoon, just in time to prevent the drip from being connected.

They seem much better now. Still, a weekend we’d all rather forget.

A mad dash over to Darwen on the moutain bike last night, met up with Simon and John and we rode our bikes not for training, not racing, no other reason other than fun. Just riding a bike for a laugh. Through mud, down steps, up steps (that’s not much fun), though a farmyard where allegedly they had shooters….

Fun.

It’s all too easy to allow yourself to forget why you started riding bikes offroad in the first place. Riding on your own through the winter can make you focus on what you think are the “right” things but maybe you’re missing the point.  Sometimes sharing the ride with your mates is refreshing like that; just a reminder of how ace bikes are (and in my case, how crap you are at riding down steps – good job I don’t live in Calderdale any more).

I rode back, arrived home 4 hours later and I hadn’t been rained on.

Anyway, I went for a run after work today. My 10k time’s coming down. Got chased by the barky dog. My dog barked back. Business as usual.

I don’t really understand why many cyclists use turbo trainers in the winter. I can’t stand mine for longer than an hour at a time, so it’s only really any use for intervals. I’ve spent the winter riding for long periods and building a base – if I rode for 4 hours on an indoor trainer, sheltered from the bad weather or not, I’d probably curl up and die of utter boredom. When it gets to this time of year I find it really useful for doing the stuff that you just can’t do on the road without risking getting run over by a bus whilst your lungs try to eject themselves through your chest, your throat starts to bleed and your eyes fill with sweat. Ok, it’s not quite that bad 😉

Anyway, I’ve started using the torture machine again for the first time in months. I completed a relatively short interval session on it at the weekend and it came as a bit of a shock. Hopefully it’ll get “easier” thus allowing me to do longer sessions. I’ve also started to do more hill repeats – last night’s road ride consisted of a hilly 35 mile warm-up followed by some repeats on the horrible northern side of the hill at Affetside.

The ride (not the reps) was good fun, despite getting another soaking and almost getting t-boned by a pillock who either didn’t realise I was doing 30mph or just wanted to scare me. I’m wearing orange and I’ve got a stupidly-bright LED on the front of the bike so he must have seen me. Eejit.

Observant readers will also notice the running and rowing mileage totals have been increasing too J

40-odd miles last night on the road. I headed north towards Rawtenstall and then towards Burnley just to ensure plenty of climbing, turned around and came back. It was gone 10pm before I turned round – for some reason I thought it would be good to be in bed by midnight…
I lost count of the number of potholes I hit at speed last night. The almost-constant horizontal rain in my face made it quite difficult to spot them in time. Perhaps I should report them all to the council on that “report a pothole” website thing but I’d be at it for ages. I can’t be arsed, in other words.

I’ve set up a Just Giving page so I can collect sponsorship for the CLIC24 race in May. I’ve also managed somehow to put a button over there on the left <—-

I need a minimum amount in order to race so feel free to throw cash at me.

It’s been a few years since I did CLIC – it was my first 24 hour solo and I remember arriving in a storm the night before the race and staying up all night, holding my tent down. I did it completely solo as well, like a blithering idiot. Great race though – the course is a humdinger. I managed 13 laps before collapsing in a heap, then driving home from Somerset (praise the lord for Red Bull).