Losing An Old Friend

A second day on the bike and I have to negotiate my way around a serious set of road works that have suddenly appeared in Spondon. They are in the process of laying down a new road surface and I notice that a pothole that I have been swerving around for the last eight years has finally gone. That pothole and I go back a long long way. 2006 in fact. It’s like losing an old friend.

Tennis tonight, which at first appears to be in some doubt as the heavens open just as I’m about to leave work. The rain eases and by the time I reach Nottingham, the roads are totally dry. Nottingham has missed the storm completely. So tennis goes ahead and I lose 6-3 6-1. We retire to the Victoria, along with the dogs who have joined me tonight with L and Daughter having gone off to punch the lights out of something or other at boxercise.

(Thursday 21^st August)

Phase Two

Phase 2 of the training weekend is today’s Thoresby Cycle Fest Sportive, which I’m doing on deliberately tired legs. I’m on the 50 mile route, L’s on the 34 mile.

We drive up to Thoresby Hall for the start, leaving the boys at home due to the expected hot weather.

I start off and quickly get my head down, using my aerobars (I need the practice). I whizz past several folk although the downside is the aerobars make pothole dodging difficult and there are a lot to dodge. Then 20 miles in, I find one particularly large one unmissable. I disappear down it. At first I think I’ve punctured both tyres but it just turns out to be the rear one. Good job, as I only have one spare tube. I’ve also knocked both my rear brake and my bike computer out of alignment and it takes another 10 miles to get both functioning correctly again.

That takes me to the feed station at Halam, just outside Southwell. It is a well stocked feed station, loads of cakes and a cup of tea, much better than the Kilo To Go ones. Although they don’t have any bike spares. So I can’t get another tube and therefore have to make sure I don’t fall down any more holes on the rest of the route. It is a route that seems to cover the northern most sections of the Great Nottingham Bike Ride, so I’ll be back on these roads next month.

Overall it’s all very well organised and there are other races on during the weekend as well. These include the Unicycle & British Open Penny farthing Championships and also some Paper boy racing. I really wished I’d entered the latter. They’ve even erected dummy doors to post newspapers through.

L does her 34 Miles in 03:12, I do my 50 in 03:42 but if you take off my puncture stop and the fact I had a leisurely cup of tea, perhaps I could have caught her.

We get home to the news that all the remaining 17,000 Play Off tickets, that went on general sale this morning, sold in 54 minutes. Wow. Sadly my brother didn’t get the four he was looking for.

Later we take the dogs down the local pubs for a beer, as we need to rehydrate for tomorrow. Sadly the Wheelhouse has taken the Abbot off, so we move across to the Wollaton Pub which has equally dull beer but better food. I drink the Black Sheep.

(Saturday 17^th May)

Powder Dry, Bone Dry

L reckons that we should both be getting up and getting fit rather than getting amorous in bed. I disagree, plenty of muscles group that can be worked on here and all at seven calories per minute (so they say). Then because I’m on the bike today, I have to get a real shift on to get to work on time because I’m running late which does my legs loads of good, I hope.

As I’m on the bike, dodging potholes, I best mention the recent University of Nottingham study which reckons they can improve average life of a pothole repair from four years to fifteen. Hang on a sec. Four years! Who are they kidding. Four months more like. The ones I cycle over are re-repaired every year and even that isn’t often enough.

I have another look at the Olympic tickets website. There seems to be availability for a lot of things at the moment, apart from athletics and cycling of course. One wonders why all these tickets weren’t on sale in the first place... plus they’re limiting people to one set of tickets each now, which would have been a good idea in the first place. I’m keeping my powder dry (it's bone dry) for an assault on the modern pentathlon and the triathlon, which are added tomorrow. I just hope that everyone else isn’t planning the same.

After work, I pedal to the pool for a swim. L says she's rather jealous but she wouldn't be if she saw the queue, which is out of the door. It's an almost exclusively female queue so I assume they're all going to be booking into bodypump, zumba, pilates, chairobics or whatever the current fashion is but no, they all pass through saying ‘swim please’. So OMG it's going to be busy. If it had been all been men I'd have been running in the opposite direction because it would have been competitive hell at the top end of the pool. I know it's going to be busy but at least it’ll be scenic.

Actually it’s hell. Twenty-eight swimmers across five lanes, the sixth lane is shut for a lesson and there are eight in the fun pool. These morning swimmer like L get it so easy. I make it a quick one.

(Wednesday 16th May)