Saturday 29th March 2014
Cycling (02:49:33 / 44.00 Miles / 15.60 MPH / HRZ2 / Cadence 78)
Where do I start on this one? Seriously, I’m not sure how best to find the words to adequately describe the misery of this ridetoday.
What started out as a plan to cover 75 miles was fairly quickly dropped and it became a case of just get us the hell home and out of this F’ing wind and rain.
I was joined for today’s Polar expedition by Nelson “The Fall Guy” Shanks, Ian “Big Ring” Pollard and Arran “Wonder Boy” McKee. To set some context, Ian had been out to celebrate his wedding anniversary the night before and was hung-over. Arran and I had met up with some of the boys from the club the night before and although not steaming drunk had several shandies and were perhaps a little sleep deprived the next morning. Nelson was probably the only one who felt in decent shape for the ride.
Arran and I hooked up on the way out to Hillsborough and then met up with the other boys there. It didn’t start out too bad but within about 5 minutes it was becoming obvious that the continuous drizzle and headwind were going to be a bit of a nuisance – to put it mildly. The road from Hillsborough to Ballynahinch was an interesting exercise in mental fortitude as we swapped turns at the front every five minutes. It is amazing how in the short space of 5 minutes you can erase the memory of how bad the wind was and then have a rude awakening as you peel round to the front for your turn again. Joyous, simply joyous!
Once we finally battled our way though Ballynahinch (where Nelson managed to stay on the bike and not hurl himself to the pavement this time) we made out way out to Saintfield where the humour was really starting to run out now! We stopped in the gateway to a Church to gather ourselves and eat something and it must have been diving inspiration that caused me to suggest that we ditch the 75 mile plan and go for something much more sensible. There was unanimous agreement, especially from Nelson who mentioned that he hadn’t been able to feel his Man-Danglers for quite some time. Strangely, no one volunteered to feel them for him!!
So 75 planned miles was likely to be cut by about 30 miles in one single act of agreement. Ian looked delighted as he hates this bad weather and to be fair he was hardcore, wearing only a short sleeved cycling shirt and arm warmers. No wonder he was keen to get out of the torrents and wind.
The whinging among us didn’t subside at any point and once we got to Moneyreagh the climb out to Carryduff really knocked the crap out of me in particular.
It was around this point that I realised that “Wonder Boy” McKee is actually a lying Git!! “Oh, I hate hills” he squeaked earlier in the ride. Yeah!! He really looked to be disliking them as he peeled off the front and disappeared up the hill at pace with Nelson engaging the competitive gene and following him, leaving Ian and I to bring up the rear.
The power of laughter became apparent as we headed up a short but vicious little climb out of Carryduff. I heard the big clunk of missed gears. My thought was that ‘Big Ring ‘ was going for the small ring and missed it. The subsequent “For Fu#*’s sake!” confirmed my suspicions. This expletive outburst made Nelson laugh so hard that he missed his gears too and for once I was the one left chasing Arran up the hill as the other two struggled to gain momentum after the failed gear shifts.
Several miles down the road we stopped at a junction to re-group and we were confronted with something that I have never seen before or wish to again. It was like a scene from a Sci-Fi film.
‘Wonder Boy’ had turned in to ‘Soapy Hole Boy.’
Nelson spotted it first and pointed out the foamy bubbles emerging en-masse from Arran’s chamois on his Arse! Where did they come from? What was causing it? Why was Nelson looking at Arran’s arse? All questions we may never know the answer to but still valid.
What happened next was equally inexplicable and disturbing. Nelson used his gloved hand to WIPE some of the foam from the padded rectal region and lift it up to show Arran. DEAR GOD WHY?
I wouldn’t even have touched it with a rubber glove toed to the end of a barge pole!
We had a good laugh about it and all tried to get away ahead of Arranin case the wind rushing past him blew some of the anal suds our way. We will just have to put it down as one of life’s great mysteries, or else Arran has been drinking Fairy Non-Bio in an effort to clear out his guts after Sufferfest-ival last week.
The rest of the ride was a short procession of misery homewards with a few more hills, wind and rain chucked in just to really demoralise us.
Although we didn’t manage the 75 miles, we had tough miles, tough hills and a couple of laughs in an otherwise humourless day with over 600M of elevation gain. Good training even if it wasn’t fun.
Week 20 Summary
8H 14 Mins
Swim 4700M
Bike 75.03 Miles
Run 10.01 Miles
Slightly disappointing week in terms of overall volume and training time, mostly due to easing back in to it following last week’s Sufferfest-ival and the shortened long ride.
I’m happy though that I didn’t seem to injure myself after the big bike week last week and also that my swimming yardage increased a bit this week
I was pleased with the endurance swim session and my run home from work. The bike felt reasonably strong too, so it may have been a lighter week but decent enough.
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