It’s all getting a bit real now. We’ve had the fundraising night, we’ve had our photos in the paper, we’ve upped the miles (not enough) and now it’s definitely starting to loom… we really are going to have to do this.
Cycling from London to Paris didn’t seem like much of a thing, back in the Autumn. A hundred miles a day? No problem.
But there’s an anxiety that crept up on me during the last training session. It sort of seeped out the right pedal, along my little toe (the one I broke once, falling off a gate in Cornwall once upon a time), up my leg … and settled on the outside of my right knee. At mile 45 it was uncomfortable. At 47, it was time to stop. It was like an angry mole was burrowing out the side of my leg with a rubber spoon. A dull, persistent throb.
That night, Sunday, I sat watching the football with a bag of Tesco’s finest mixed frozen veg strapped to my knee and a mournful, old man face on. The kids thought I’d gone mad. “Mummy, Daddy’s got carrots on his knee..."
A later visit to the physio.
And not enough of them, for how sore it was. I watched Messi run around playing for Barcelona, thinking, I bet this doesn’t happen to you Leo, I bet nobody sticks processed frozen veg on your expensive knees.
Apparently, according to the Internet, the pain in the knee stems from an Incorrect Cleat Position. There’s very little in the way of information as to what a correct position would be. Trial and painful error seems to be the way forward.
But my point is this: I didn’t quite manage 50 miles on Sunday. In 8 weeks, we’ll be spinning off into the unknown doing double that. And the same again the next day. And the next…
So what keeps us going?
Well there’s nothing more cheering, as a member of a team, than knowing you’re among similarly crazy people. Take our unofficial figurehead and inspiration John, although I’ll get in to trouble for mentioning him without mentioning the others (“I’m not the bl**dy story, Ewan, stop trying to make me the story…”).
I might have been worrying about the bendy bit in the middle of my leg on Sunday, but at least I wasn’t on a one man mission to vent the Fury of Ages upon unsuspecting dog walkers.
One hapless Sunday morning pet stroller, who, it must be said, could have had better control of her animal, was presented with John full-force, as he had to swerve (angrily) to avoid certain disaster with her bounding dug.
He said quite a few angry words. The best bit was, the angrier he got, the funnier it became. And hence-forth, he was rechristened Angry of Renfrewshire. (Go on, tell him that’s what brakes are for, I dare you…)
It’s now our mission to visit that fury on the unsuspecting people of France.
And I thought we needed to worry about being unprepared!
Thanks for your support.
Ewan.
Angry shows his soft side breaking into a smile!
James and Robert were hanging about in hope as the passengers alighted this bus at Loch Lomond.
