Week beginning Monday 5th April. 54 days to go

So once again, training was all a bit disjointed this week. Jeremy got back from the Canaries suffering the consequences of having eaten one of those lukewarm tuna ciabattas that seem standard fare at airports these days. His ‘cycling camp’ appears to have been a success, He reports that the mountain training has given him legs like ‘tree trunks’ and that breathtaking scenery (see photo) gave him the strength to keep up with the peloton of finely honed German athletes.

Chris has gone skiing this week with his shiny new bike (and his family). We are getting alarming texts suggesting that he’s doing 40 mile Alpine rides by way of après ski. Still, that’s Chris.

Graham has had a somewhat less athletic week. The trouble with running your own Garden maintenance business is that at this time of year things suddenly start to grow and strangely, this means they need to be ‘maintained’. It would appear that Graham’s meticulously crafted planning algorithms which are supposed to effortlessly direct the right white van, to the right place, at the right time - had the decimal point in the wrong place. The result was confusion, shouting, interesting gesticulations, and only time for a couple of hours on the Turbo.

As for me, now the days are getting longer, I find the 29 mile commute into the office in Maidenhead quite achievable and I managed this a couple of times in the week racking up 116 miles in the process. I’m afraid I can’t give you an average speed as my bike computer received a good wash at 40 degrees on a short spin.

So with Chris skiing and Jeremy still suffering the after affects of his Ciabatta, this Sunday’s cycle was again just Graham and I. A relatively short ride; 70 miles via Thame, Bicester and Wheatley. It was a lovely morning, lots of cyclists out. We came up on one pair of guys all nicely attired in those excellent Foska ‘London Pride’ beer road jerseys. “Do you think we can take them?” asks Graham. We go for it and fly past, desperately trying to make an impressive get away. We thought we were clear however as we sweated up a serious hill coming out of Wheatly, the London Priders glided serenely past us and just to make the point, started chatting to us on the steepest part of the incline about how they were training for the Etape. All in all a good ride, we left Streatley at 06:00 back just after 10:00 averaging a shade over 17 mph, the early finish earning innumerable smarty points at home.