With Deb and the children away in Spain all week, there wasn’t much to do apart from go to work and ride bikes. Actually, that’s not strictly true. I’ve been living in relative squalor all week because all I’ve been doing is working or riding bikes instead of hoovering and washing dishes, but you know what I mean. Besides, eating pasta straight from the pan takes me back to my youth 😉

Anyway, the week went kind of like this;

Monday –Up early, out to Tesco to buy “appropriate” food for the week then work then home, eat food, feed dog, out on bike for a shortish 30 miler offroad (Birtle, Nangreaves, Gin Croft Lane, etc – lots of climbing). The ground was dry and rock hard so a stupidly fast pace was necessary. Rode for a bit with a bloke on an Orange P7 who I tried to drop on a long downhill into Edenfield but my bottle ran out before his did.

Tuesday – up early, 8K run then home, eat, work, home, eat, bike out for 40 miles off road, this time the Ramsbottom/maggot farm/Whitton Weavers/Winter Hill loop then home – get stuff ready for big ride tomorrow then flop into bed.

Wednesday – Day off work. Rode to Rooley Moor Road at 6am to meet Phil. We had a plan for a long ride that was similar to the epic Dave and I did a few weeks ago however the lack of a pick-up at the end meant we’d have to do an out-and-back. We rode the MTL anti-clockwise for a few miles from Rooley Moor to Summit, then (can you guess?) went south on the Pennine Bridleway as far as Hayfield 35 or so miles and 2000ish metres of ascent away. Huge cups of tea and chicken baguettes in the caff at the bottom of Lantern Pike then turned around and rode back on the same route. Incidentally the return leg of this ride was almost an hour quicker than the outbound journey – Phil’s never done anything this long before, I think he was saving his legs early on!

The weather was perfect. Dry but not mega-sunny, a slight breeze. It was also clear enough to be able to see the Scout Moor wind farm in the distance from almost the furthest point south on our journey – I think the fact that we could actually see our destination still with 40 miles to go spurred us on somewhat. That, and the fact that I had to be getting a move on…

90 or so miles later (70ish offroad) I arrived home again after riding back though the Rochdale and Middleton rush hour traffic, ate more pasta from the pan, showered, took the dog out for a walk then swapped the Scandal for the 456 for another ride the same evening with Simon, Neil and Andrew. No racing, not training, just the regular Wednesday night giggle on the local trails. Another 15 miles, one beer and a few more nettle stings.

Home, dumped bike in kitchen with the other one, ironed a shirt for the day after, flopped into bed.

Thursday – 14 hours of riding on Wednesday so Thursday was a no running, no riding, just resting kinda day. Work, home, eat food, took the dog to Heaton Park for a nosey at the Oasis concert, went home, watered plants, tidied up and then cleaned bikes whilst listening to Kasabian and Oasis play live a mile or so away. Successfully avoided Big Brother (actually, I’ve just realised that I’ve only watched 20 minutes of telly all week), watched Obama’s Egypt speech on the laptop, flopped into bed.

Friday – work then collected Deb and the girls from the airport. Interval session on the turbo, watched the rain come down, got the road bike ready for tomorrow.

I could bag a record number of miles this week – certainly a record in terms of hours spent riding (the more important statistic in my opinion), which hopefully will equate to good preparation for Mountain Mayhem in a couple of weeks’ time. There’s a lot of miles to be ridden this weekend but a record-breaking week is definitely ‘on’.