JULES AND PHIL'S 2008 ETAPE BLOG

APRIL 2008 - JULES STORY

Link to January Blog ..more
Link to February Blog ..more
Link to March Blog ..more

Blog 4

 

Rocky Wall

 

The Training Camp is now just over two weeks away and I'm back in training, chasing chickens in the yard, lifting logs and chopping down trees and wrestling sheep in clay bogs (I don't think Sylvester Stallone did that but it got the old ticker going). It's the comeback of all comebacks I'm lining up a Gold in the Etape and at least one or two wins at Crystal Palace and a top five in the 3 Peaks…………visualization is everything.

 

Back to reality…..

 

Pain-wise when I'm riding the ankle is pretty good although it twinges a bit when I'm out the saddle; my left side, that old ‘closed kinetic chain' of mine has pain in every joint: Big toe, ankle, knee, and hip, my upper back is a bit locked up as well….the right legs OK though and should get me through.

I'm seeing ‘The Fugallo' at the moment for physiotherapy, there's nothing else I can do with my riding position so I've got to get the old body in to line. My first appointment left me riding squarer on the bike but it was a painful experience…….

 

I will have knocked up nine hours on the bike this week which is the most since January and should hopefully get the same in again each week before the camp. I'm still cruising in the 39 although any rider wearing those camp ¾ length trousers on a Condor single speed is fair game and deserves a good hiding (apart from Charlie Pearch).

 

We have been going to Mallorca now for six years and I always look forward to our Training Camps, even though we are working (if you can call it that) life is simple and it's unusual to have so much time to oneself. A leisurely breakfast is followed by a day's riding, a nap/coma in the afternoon, dinner with a glass or two of Cava and then off to bed again with a good book.

I'm even looking forward to Mark Neeps infamous radioactive Chorizo sandwiches that he provides for lunch from the back of his support car.

San Miguel by the pool? Yes please.

 

When I'm commuting in to Cyclefit in the mornings through delightful Deptford I visualize the rides we use in Mallorca : out to the Cap and back, the roads through the foot hills of the mountains, the reedy road and the glorious descent down to Porto Pollensa. One of my favourite rides was after spending the day in the car looking after the riders, I rode out to Cala san Vicente and looped back via Sa Pobla . The temperature started to cool and the scent from the Orange groves was stunning, it was me on a bike in a foreign land, perfect.

Sometimes I would get a twinge of guilt on these trips and hope that at home everything carried on as usual: the kids were behaving themselves and the wife was relaxed, unstressed and completely understanding of my need to ride my bike in the sunshine in a foreign land and in predominantly male company….

 

The Ottrott is back out on the road and is singing sweetly to me, do I deserve such a great bike I here you ask? I think I do, if I don't who does?

It's the closest I'll get in my midlife crisis to a Ferrari or a mistress and a lot more reliable than either of them.

Read my review on my own Serotta Ottrott SE ..more

Happy riding

 

PHIL'S STORY - A Fat, Fragile Neophye Pro

So tied with my emotional and mental state is cycling at this time that had I written this blog three days ago it would have read like a treatise in self-loathing. But I have started riding again and the flirtation of bike/body imaging can come off pause one more time.
But let's backup.

The Nadir
A month ago I was self-indulgently surfing a negative wave of fatigue-induced depression. Wallowing a bit if you will. After Jules grudging advice to back right off and 'ride how I felt' it all actually started to come together. I managed a couple of seven and one eight hour week and even got my Glider on the big-ring whilst trying to re-position my rucksack over a speed bump.

Return to The Mothership
Then at the end of March Jules and I were invited to go to an experimental conference at Serotta in New York. The idea was to get a small cadre of five companies who work to similar standards together at Serotta's SICI School with the Intern Director Paraic McGlynn. Whilst there we would workshop over two eighteen hour days all our ideas, theories and techniques to inform, guide and progress the SICI curriculum and bike-fitting subject as a whole. Remember these are the five best companies in the world specialising in the field of cycling biomechanics and custom-building? And my only thought was that I would lose a whole week's training in favour of eating my own body weight in muffins and exresso (de-rigour on such occasions). Work was getting in the way of my new-found body-image as a bike-racer. Dammit. So another bloody week off the bike - even if meant being inspired, challenged, informed, innovated and tantilised by the very best the world has to offer. Woe is me.

Moved and an Ephiphany
The very weekend I flew back home we moved house from The Midlands to The Chilterns (six of the best words in the English language provided you get your 'from' and 'to' in the right places). A week long saga of boxes, ratchet straps, trapped fingers and deep-cut knuckles. Wife permanently wearing 'don't even dare mention your bloody bike' expression through the whole sorry affair.
So now a whole two weeks off the bike. And me a fragile fat neophyte pro?
And then an epiphany - A few days ago I woke up in our rented house down the end of a comic-book frosty track. It was sunny, I got up early and rode all the way to work. It reminded me of why I started cycling in the first place - adventure and exploration.

Re-Born
I started the ride a bitter, frustrated and anguish-ridden midle-aged man. I arrived two and a quarter hours later at Covent Garden a bike racer on the come back trail. Full of dreams and ideas. Refreshed calm and back in balance.

Leaving after four long years the county of a million hills - but none of them worth climbing - to the most eclectic bunch of serious climbs within a stones throw of London.

Phil

Link to January Blog ..more
Link to February Blog ..more
Link to March Blog ..more

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