The Bilge on Sunday

Today is a weekend kinda Sunday, which means it's seven days before next weekend's Sunday. On that day - all things going according to Plan - I'll be riding the Franja Maraton in Slovenia. Last year, I said I'd do it and I'm not backing down. It's 155km with a couple of longish climbs, and looks like a bit of fun. The aim for me is to stay on the bike in the first 20km section out of town, which is neutralised.

The good thing is that I can climb hills again, although my knee is far from 100 percent. I got up the steep hill at Pucklechurch on Friday, then did a slightly longer one en route to the Bristol Bike Fest on Saturday. I was down to ride that as part of a team, but contented myself with watching other members of WhatMTB thrash around the course at Ashton Court. Well, by watching I mean I sat in the shade with a beer and relaxed while said riders would come back from their laps looking very hot and bothered. Then I went home. The end.

Jez and his grass-floored campervan
© Jeff Jones
Our crew at the Bristol Bike Fest
© Jeff Jones

Sunday was better. I got out with Will and we did a lap of Chew Valley and Blagdon Lakes, coming back via Stowey and Timsbury and I finished up with 100km. I got up the Stowey hill in 4'20, which is about 330W, or about 20% off what I can do when I'm fit and going flat out. Still, at the start of the week I was passed by a guy wearing jeans on an MTB on a small rise on the bike path...so there's been quite an improvement. I reckon I should have everything back in around two weeks. That means the last two months has been a complete write off in terms of building on whatever form I had in early April. Bit annoying, but not as bad as last year.

I'm reading The Flying Scotsman at the moment. It's by Graeme Obree and is a good insight into his life and career. He was a brilliant innovator and a world class rider (hour record breaker, world champion, but he didn't quite fit the mold of a professional cyclist. He has bipolar disorder and he has really struggled to deal with it all through his life. He tried to commit suicide two or three times, poor bugger. But he's still alive and has gone back to racing, as that often helped him smooth out the bumps.

There's a movie out based on the book, which should be worth a look.

Speaking of books, I'm back in Fopp and trying to write another bit of mine. Our writers group is getting together next Thursday to workshop each other's stuff. I've submitted a chapter, but I've seen precious little from the Others.

And now to matters of import, viz:

What's the deal with Paris Hilton only spending three days in jail? For some reason, this annoys me. What's the point of having 45 days when you only serve three? If the US jails are overcrowded, then they could always let out a mass murderer for a bit while she does her time. No-one would notice. Or just send her to the chair. Breaking a driving probation is a pretty serious crime in at least 47 states. As a citizen of Great Britain and Australia, I demand justice.

Spiderman #3: Hmm...it dragged in a few places. I thought MJ should have completely disowned Spidey and run off with Venom. And the Sandman was too fragile. But a good enough slice of entertainment for a Susan Sontag sort of afternoon.

OK, enough dribble. Back on your heads.

Forging ahead

The tables have turned and I am well on the road to recovery. That is pointing towards Bristol and back, as I pootle up and down the bike path for 40km each morning. Riding time has dropped from a very sluggish 1:33 to 1:24 today. Another four minutes quicker, and I'll be back to my rest day pace...

Still, the riding and icing of bruises (thanks for the tip Laura) have kicked things on a bit, and I can actually walk up stairs without much pain now. It will be at least another week before I can take the dressing off my knee, because that was such a big hole. Today, the nurse told to come back for a fourth visit and she gave me another plastic sword.

I'm going to rank this as my third worst crash after a) breaking my wrist last year (4 weeks in a cast + 2 months to get the strength back) and b) putting a big hole in my hip 10 years ago (3 weeks with metal stitches + a general anaesthetic). I've never been this bruised before but I'll get over it.

Aim for June/July/August/etc: stay on the bike. Like Roy and HG said about the weightlifter: "Just lift the bar"

It's all go at work now, with less than a couple of weeks until launch. The required run rate is going up, but we'll get there.

The joys of being injured

The problem with being sick or injured or all three is that you get bored. And when you're bored, you don't feel like doing anything to make life less boring. For example, adding more pages to your doorstop.

It should be clear by now that there is no second person in this narrative; it's just me. So I will switch to the first person.

I found salvation in two DVDs: We Can Be Heroes, which is quite a good piss take of Australian ordinariness, and The Dream, which is Roy and HG's incredibly funny take on the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. Yes, both of these saved my life.

I've also watched a lot of BBC4, which this week has been about the evolution of British Children's TV. The Brits do nostalgia very well and it was interesting to see the story of The Magic Roundabout and The Tomorrow People. I didn't know that Magic Roundabout was actually French, but had an English story set to the animation. And that it was full of subtle humour.

On the book front, I've just about finished Junky. It's probably not the best read if you're feeling a bit queasy and fragile, but I got there. It's sordid, raw and addictive. There's an element of watching a plane crash over and over again, but it's worth the read. Remind me not to become a junkie. I've had enough of needles and being prodded for one week.

I went back to the finest surgery in Bath to get my stitches taken out at the leisure of the NHS. They didn't even give me a plastic sword! But I now no longer have any blue threads in my face and knee, just a couple of jagged looking scars. I have to go back next Wednesday for what I hope will be the final checkup.

I asked them whether I could ride now. "If you feel up to it," was the response. That's the equivalent of "Whatever" in NHS-speak.

Walking is still bloody painful. My right calf and my left hamstring work in concert to send spasms up and down my legs. I managed to hobble into work for the past two days but it's going to be a while longer before I can go at my normal speed. My colleague Matt Cole, who dislocated his shoulder five weeks ago, has just got his sling off and is working on getting his strength back. We are a sorry bunch.

I think I'll try to get out for an hour on the velocipede, among other fun things, on the weekend.

Oh no, not again

"Wiggle your big toe."

I recalled Uma Thurman's words in Kill Bill Vol. 1 as I lay in a bed in Salisbury hospital on Saturday. It wasn't a particularly hard thing to do, because unlike Uma, I wasn't coming out of a five year coma. It was just a way of passing the time while I waited to get out of there.

It's meant to be bad karma to kill a bird on the way to a cyclosportif. And also to see only one magpie without uttering something that I can't quite remember now. We (Kirsty, Craig and I) managed to do both on the way to the first stage of the Tour of Wessex. I think I ended up bearing the brunt of the bad karma with Kirsty getting off with a cold. Even on the way back from hospital, we nearly killed another magpie (the karma behind us got it) and a dog. So I can now put in that quote about "your karma ran over my dogma."

Things were shaping up pretty well before I crashed on a speed hump coming out of Stourhead House, 25km into the event. It was a beautful day, with over 1000 starters in this 100 miler. We'd all left Sutton Montis at around 7:30, so were only 10 minutes behind the first riders. I was moving along at a decent pace, and had an average of over 30km/h for the first 25 clicks, which included 500m of climbing.

After climbing up to Alfred's Tower, we were directed into the grounds of Stourhead House. Very pretty, although it included 200m of gravel/dirt road. I remember when I recce'd this ride with the organiser earlier this year, he asked me whether he should keep this bit in, because there were complaints last year about the off-road section.

"Yeah, leave it in. The grounds are really nice," was my well-considered response. The section isn't actually that bad. It's more or less a driveway up to the house with no potholes. Road tyres can handle it.

I also recall (now) that the organiser pointed out a hard-to-spot speedbump on the exit road out of the grounds. It was shaded by trees and wasn't marked in any way, so it was rather surprising to a casual cyclist. Of course, being quite casual myself I'd forgotten about this tiny detail as I gathered speed and changed hand positions from my brake hoods to my drops. Hitting a speedbump when your weight is forward, you're going downhill and you don't have your hands on the bars is generally a bad thing.

My face hit the ground first, followed by the rest of me and then the bike (which was relatively unscathed. Phew). I wasn't sure whether I'd broken any teeth but I did know that my lip was bleeding a lot, my knee had a large hole in it, I had grazes everywhere and I couldn't walk. I shuffled off the road as people stopped to help and I knew that I wouldn't be riding any more that day. One guy called the emergency number, and we were promised help in "10-15 minutes" but it took a while longer before two emergency service bikes turned up. They couldn't really do much for me anyway. But by this stage, Craig, another friend George and Kirsty had all arrived and had phoned an ambulance.

Kirsty wasn't feeling too crash hot and decided to call it quits, and thankfully hung around until the ambo arrived. After I was taken away at about 9am, she tried the emergency number again, but eventually had to catch a taxi back to the start. She wasn't impressed. My bike was retrieved later on.

I was taken to the hospital just outside Salisbury at Odstock - coincidentally where Lucy was born - because the accident happened in Wiltshire county. There was a hospital a lot closer than that, but due to the stupidly archaic system they have here, you have to go to the one in whatever county you're in. Chris, one of the ambulance crew, also thought this was silly. But, while inhaling large amounts of nitrous oxide, I had a good chat to him as he was a keen cycling fan up until about 10 years ago. As a point of note, N2O is what they give to pregnant women in labour. It makes your head spin and has a slight relaxing effect, but it wears off in a few minutes so you can inhale as much as you like.

I have to give a big double thumbs up to the hospital staff, who were numerous and quite competent. There was one doctor who examined me and stitched me up, and four very nice nurses who cleaned all of my wounds. It definitely wasn't all bad!

I didn't break anything, but my lip required about six stitches as there was a flap of skin that had come loose. There wasn't too much tissue loss so I shouldn't have a big scar. It's still very swollen and blood-caked.

My knee needed three stitches, although they were going to just bandage it. It was quite a deep hole and they were debating whether to stitch over "empty space", deciding eventually that it was a good idea. I also got some clear dressing on the puncture wounds in my left hamstring, where I'd somehow dug into the chainwheel. The rest of the grazes (elbows, knuckles, left shin, buttocks) could sort themselves out.

One moment of levity came when they were trying to take my pulse. The nurse had a machine that attached to my finger, but it wasn't registering anything.

"Does this mean that I'm dead?" I asked.
"Yes," she said. "But you can still talk."

We were in stitches.

I got moved to 'short stay' while I waited for The Others to come and reclaim me. I was the only one there for a while, until they brought in a 96 year-old woman who'd broken her arm and really didn't want to be in hospital. "I don't want to be here," she would say. "But you have to!" her son and daughter-in-law would chorus in response. It wasn't until the doc came in and told her that she'd broken her arm that she realised.

There were also a couple of kids and their parents. One of the kids had chipped his elbow and was yelling a lot, prompting his sister to do the same. In true English fashion, the parents weren't particularly sympathetic. "Shut up, or I'll take you home." (continued screaming) "Stop crying, or you'll go home." (continued crying) "Do you want to go home? I mean it!" (etc.) The kid only quietened down when the parent asked "What's wrong?" Funny that.

The only other down side to my stay in hospital was when I ate a cheddar cheese and spring onion sandwich. I was on a drip, but the nurses were really insistent that I eat something "soft". Now, bread can be soft when it's fresh, but in my experience lengthy periods of refrigeration do not preserve freshness. Anyway, I had a few sustaining cups of tea.

I did make it home late afternoon thanks to Kirsty and Craig, to whom I owe several beverages. Neither of them were planning on riding stage 2 on Sunday, as the weather was going to be - and is now - crap. 10 degrees and rain. Welcome to almost-summer.

I have to go to the doctor on Tuesday to get the stitches looked at, and there's a fair chance that I'll be riding again before the end of the week. Annoyingly, I can't really walk beause of a bruise on my calf.

Now, what's on telly on Sunday at midday? Nothing.

Just another blog in the wall

I cannot beloive that June is almost upon us. That means it'll soon be July and then August. I think September comes next, but my memory is dim. We'll cross that week when we come to it.

I nearly starved to death this week because I couldn't find time to go shopping. Post-work beers, post-work work and of course pre-work rides took up the available hours. Work did go slightly insane for a change, but it was good because we made several great leaps forward towards our site launch. Or is that forwards toward, or forwards towards?

The food situation was alleviated by beer and chess on Monday. Our designer can play chess to a reasonable standard, which means he beat me hands down in our first game and I just managed to get one back in the second. Apart from three pints of beer, I had a small tub of yoghurt for dinner (seeing as it was late and all). It didn't seem to slow me down next morning, as I knocked another 10 seconds off my quickest time up Kingsdown. It's down to 7'08 now. I should be able to get under 7'00.

More beer was the only option on Tuesday, followed by the remains of a curry. Wednesday was just silly at work. Fortunately, a fine Schwartz burger and chips sufficed to fill the gaping chasm that is my stomach. These are actually alright.

Thursday: back to normal. Fridge refilled and now partially emptied.

Shorts were in order today, for the first time this year. The weather should hold for Saturday, which will make the Tour of Wessex a whole lotta fun. I'm going to start about an hour behind everyone and do it at my own pace, aiming for about 30km/h (it's 100 miles and very hilly).

Misselanie:

I'm in the UK's Official Tour Guide next month (looking slightly scary) as part of an ad for our new site. That's going to be fun once it launches.

Another good cafe in Bath: Metropolitan, above Bloomsbury on Milsom St. Unfortunately, the coffee quality in Fopp has gone a bit random.

Time warp

Why is it that the last hour of jetlag takes so long to get rid of? I've woken up between 3:43am and 4:47am for the last few days, and generally can't keep my eyes open past 9pm. Anyway, it means I can ride more in the mornings, so that's good.

I did my first long ride in five weeks today. 163km at an average of 31 clicks, not too hilly. After feeling good but slow all week on the hills, things started to work properly again and (with a tailwind) I knocked 15 seconds off my best time up Bannerdown without going too much into the red. I think I'll be back to normal by the Tour of Wessex next weekend. It's not a race, only a cyclosportif, so I'm planning on doing just the Saturday stage at a semi-hard pace. Then I'll get back into the Wednesday 10 mile TTs, plus more cyclosportifs in June.

I've hit upon a good call screening technique, because my el cheapo caballero phone doesn't show who is calling. Given that only ma and pa will call me on my landline, I can safely ignore all other calls. TalkTalk tried to convert me to their internet service because it would be cheaper, but I managed to stall them for a few days. I know it's them ringing me now. But I won't crack. Hah!

I've half a mind to change back to BT, which is actually cheaper than TalkTalk if you don't make any calls. At least BT doesn't ring you up and harass you. That qualifies as evil in my as yet unfinished book.

Still reading Junky, by William S. Burroughs, and Weasel Words by Don Watson. The latter is hilarious and educational. The former is easy to read but turns the stomach.

Back into time warp mode: Does anyone remember Dead Eyes Opened by Severed Heads? The 1994 remix was arguably better. I finally found out where the story came from. It was a real murder case (google Death on the Crumbles) and the narrator in the song was Edgar Lustgarten, who used to present a British TV show called Scales of Justice.

Soon the internet will enable us to look back to the big bang.

The Wedding

Just about married
© Jeff Jones

Typing this at 3:40am, Sydney time, I realise I have the dubious pleasure of being jetlagged twice in one week, thanks to a necessary but brief trip to Australia. Necessary because it was Lucy and Pete's much anticipated wedding, and there was no way I was gunna miss that. Brief because I was only down under for a week. But in that space of time (combining dimensions there), I caught up with most friends and relations and even became a brother-in-law. Woohoo!

The wedding was months in the planning and it was worth it. It was a beautiful sunny Sydney day, and you couldn't have asked for better weather. But we did anyway.

The ceremony was a simple but formal one in the Redfern registry office. It was quite cool when L+P were pronounced "man and wife"! I witnessed it along with Pete's bro Murray, who wore his kilt for the occasion and was unfortunately the only representative of his family who made it out from the UK. The only minor hitch (joke) was waiting for our silver service cabs not to turn up afterwards. We eventually found our own. In the meantime, we could soak up the ambience of the methadone clinic as we stood on Regent Street in our finery, being admired by passers by.

The pics were taken in Petersham Park by Carmen, our professional and friendly photographer. She didn't make the newlyweds do silly things like peep out from behind trees, so I would recommend her for future engagements. We were all starving by the time she finished, and retired to Ma and Pa's for Greek-style comestibles.

The main event was the evening bash at the Park Hyatt in The Rocks. It affords 270° views of the Harbour Bridge, Opera House, Circular Quay and city skyline. It can afford this because rooms are $600 a night. They're noice though.

We had 60 people on one covered rooftop, and fortunately no-one fell off. I was asked to MC for the occasion, which meant I could draw on all my experience in the area. This equated to zero, so I hope it didn't show too much. Dad's speech was excellent and very well received, while Lucy, Pete and Karin also gave some good words.

After the speeches, we got stuck into the food. The wedding cake was of the chocolate mud variety and I highly approved of this.

Naturally, Lucy and Pete were the stars of the night and they deserved it after being married and all. They cracked in the end and went to bed, while a few of us, including a large vase of flowers, retired to the downstairs lounge for some wind-down drinks, eventually making it home.

It was a grand day and night and one that will definitely go down in the family record books.

Alas, the next day I was back on the plane to London. I passed the time by getting two hours sleep, watching four movies (Stranger Than Fiction (quirkily funny), Deja Vu (OK-ish in a 5/10 sort of way), Letters from Iwo Jima (good) and The Page Turner (loved it)), getting annoyed with the couple next to me on the Sydney-Bangkok leg, and drinking Qantas coffee, which has been rated by the Welsh as being some of the best in the world. It's right up there with Thai coffee.

We arrived in London at 7am and it was cloudy and wet. "Clearly, this is London," I thought, remembering the toucan's flight home in Colonel Pewter. And yes, it took an hour to get our baggage back from the baggage retrieval system that causes so much concern in Heathrow...

One reason why Sydney is noice
© Jeff Jones

Me 'n Pete getting ready for a wedding
© Jeff Jones

Lucy is impressed at Pete's buttonhole
© Jeff Jones

Milling around at the registry office
© Jeff Jones

Lucy in her finery in Petersham Park
© Jeff Jones

Pete 'n Lucy about to run around Petersham oval
© Jeff Jones

The Family
© Jeff Jones

It's the Opera House!
© Jeff Jones

Lucy addresses the members and guests
© Jeff Jones

Cutting the very fine chocolate wedding cake
© Jeff Jones

Jollity
© Jeff Jones

Sophie warns Nina not to dive into the pond at the shallow end
© Jeff Jones

Almost human

I proved it by going back to work today, and what a Joyous Occasion it was. Headspin all but gone, and I actually feel as if I could ride a bike again. Misschien Woensdag.

It's a relief to be fully operational, because I went back into 25 year regression mode on the weekend. When it intersects with the y-axis, the slope is approximately tangential to any thought I might have had. That doesn't even make sense to me.

By way of example, I learned that Keith Parkinson died of leukemia. I appear to be a bit out of touch, because he passed away 18 months ago. I also discovered a whole archive of Wormy cartoons and investigated the parallel between doping in pro cycling and using bits of other people's work in your own paintings. Most people don't want to know how the artwork is created; they just want to admire the finished product. But when it breaks copyright laws, problems can arise. According to the Book of John, copyright is too restrictive anyway. 10-15 years should be enough. If you can't make money out of your work in that time, then it's worthless and you should put it in the public domain. Or just burn it.

Speaking of burning books, which I wasn't really but there you go... I've written a synopsis for my own firestarter (that was a totally unintentional reference to The Prodigy, btw). It was tricky to write because the book itself hasn't actually been written. It's a useful exercise, though. This week's the last in our course, so I need the synopsis and any other material I can get hold of for our end of school bonfire. We mustn't let the flame be extinguished! It's important to stay warm, after all.

Weather: 20ish, sunny. We remarked today that we could be in Barcelona. Except that we're not, we're here. Well, most of us are. I'm mostly not, preferring 1982 to the present.

Blah - reprise

Being sick is boring. Not much has happened since Monday and my head still feels the same: it's like being slightly drunk all the time without any of the benefits. Sleeping has no effect, except that it uses up time.

I did drag myself out to reclaim my Flandria from John's Bikes. No go. The gear shifter works brilliantly now, but the bottom bracket is dead, the chain is as good as dead, ditto the cluster, the brake pads have seen better days, and the cables need replacing. I left it there.

For some reason on Thursday, there was a big push from work to join Facebook. I'm there now and I have to say that it's a far better site than the horror that is MySpace. The geographical networks are mildly annoying though.

I see the Pope has officially given the thumbs down to Limbo. Damnit! Does that mean it never existed or has it simply ceased to exist now? I should become a reverse engineer for the Church. There's probably a few jobs going there now.

Lindt Madagascar chocolate is not nearly as good as the Ecuador model.

Blah

It had to happen sooner or later. A stomach virus of some sort has reduced me to a pitiful state, which means I'm watching Eamonn Holmes' 50 Film Favourites on The Hits. It really doesn't get much worse than this.

There's not much point in eating at the moment, except that it passes the time in between lying on the couch and visiting the bathroom. I went to the doctor today and she gave me an detailed oral examination lasting all of four minutes. She asked me what was wrong and I told her I thought I had a virus. Without getting any closer than five feet away, she diagnosed me with a virus and told me to 'go with the flow'. I've been taking her advice as literally as I can, and it's been knocking the, er, stuffing out of me.

The last time I had a virus was three years ago, and the doc told me not to exercise hard for at least a month or I could drop dead. I'm going to err on the side of caution and take his advice rather than merely 'going with the flow'. So no riding at all for a week and no racing for another four. Time trialling can wait.

The weekend was good anyway, apart from the general lethargy. Friday, drinks with P+L + Polly and friends. Saturday, drinks and poppadoms with P+L + some Forbes', Ant, Lesley, Nick and Sally. It was the only night out of the last five that I've felt vaguely human.

Random conversation with Ant about the Virginia Tech shootings: Ant noted that the National Rifle Association said that if all the students had guns, then Cho wouldn't have shot so many people. A brilliant piece of forward thinking there by the NRA. What was required in that situation was an escalation of violence. It worked wonders for the construction industry in Iraq.

My first '10'

The Wednesday evening 10 mile time trial is one of the strongest traditions in British cycling. It's a good distance and doesn't take too long to run a race. I did my first one this evening: Chippenham's regular weekly 10.

I knew most of the course, because we do it on the Saturday ride. It's as flat as you'll get around here and on fairly lightly trafficked roads. The course record is 21'39. It was about a 30km ride from work, which gave me a fairly solid number of km today.

I was talking to Ben at the start. He's more of a TT specialist and has been going well of late. Ben had done a 22'35 last week and wasn't sure whether he would improve it. He reckoned I could do about a 24'00 on my normal bike, which would have been a shade over 40km/h. I was hoping for a bit quicker, given the fact that I've been able to hold about 360W on longish climbs without blowing a gasket. 360W on a dead flat road with no wind on a normal bike equates to just over 23'00. With tri bars, aero helmet, skinsuit, shoe covers, aero frame and wheels, it should be possible to do around 21'50 with that power output. Minus a bit for course undulations and corners.

It was a painfully enjoyable experience, sitting on 178bpm in my 53x15 for most of it. I caught my minute man after 10 min, then my 2 min man after 20 min, and I could see my 3 and 4 minute men just ahead as I finished in 23'20. Ben started just behind me and almost caught me, as he ended with 22'23. Nice ride for the quickest time! I'm pretty sure I was fourth, as there were a couple more under 23'00. I'm looking forward to doing it on a proper TT machine :-)

Alas, me and five others got a penalty (not sure how much) for cutting one of the corners by about a foot. It was fair enough. I wasn't exactly sure where I was aiming for, but as soon as I went round it I knew. Next time, I'll make certain I get it right.

Ik ben naar Londen op het weekend om de familie te zien.

Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

That's the way it is at the moment, with the mercury hitting 297K this weekend. It's been amazing weather for the last two weeks, and I haven't yet had to clean the Ridley. I'm sure that time will come :-)

I've taken advantage of it to do a bit of bike riding. The week's stats:

Riding time: 24hrs 18min
Distance: 725km
Climbing: 8200m (broke all my climbing records this week)
Beer consumed: 0mL
Chocolate devoured: quite a lot. Really.
Schwartz burgers and chips eaten: 1 serving
Ice cream counter: 3 tubs
Coffees drunk: about 10, because I was only in the office for two days
Weight lost: 0mcg
Implication: I've eaten nearly 5000 calories per day, on average. Bloody hell!

Related stats

Book chapters revised: 2
Movies seen: 2 (300, not bad, a lot of death), The Lives of Others (very good. I must start a Stasi file on myself)
Hours spent contemplating the meaning of life: at least 40. Immanuel Kant's words on enlightenment were quite good.
Paris-Roubaix watched: 1. How good was Stuey? Maaaate.

Oxygene 2

No, it's not the name of the latest wonder drug, but it does have a bike racing correlation. Well, maybe only in my twisted mind.

It's part of a suite of electronic muzak by Jean Michel Jarre and was used in the 1981 film Gallipoli. I remember seeing this with a friend, aged 10, and it was the saddest ending to any movie I've seen, including Borat.

Rewind to Thursday night in the pub, when I had a long discussion about Italian composers with a friend of an ex-colleague's. He kept asking me about Albinoni, and I told him that he's only famous for one piece (Adagio in G minor) and he didn't even write it. Another Italian did in 1958, using Albinoni's bass line.

Friday: race (see previous post). Castle Combe, big open track that almost looks like an oval. Green grass in the middle, gently curving circuit on the outside, nice sunny day.

Saturday: 140km to Hungerford and back, feeling really good - 20 minutes quicker than the last time I did it. I love this new bike.

I got back and looked up Albinoni on Wikipedia, and found that it was used in Gallipoli. So of course I looked that up and it led me to this music. 25 years ago, and it came flooding back.

I remembered a scene from the movie where Mark Lee (Archie) and Mel Gibson (Frank) were running against each other at a sports meet around an oval. And in a beautiful tie in, it reminded me a lot of the race on Friday. Cue: 'What are your legs?' 'Steel springs.' 'What are they going to do?' 'Hurl me down the track.'

No, I still can't come to terms with winning a sprint by 20m after starting from last wheel in a 50+ rider bunch with 1km to go. Twice!

I am not a sprinter and I've done a total of one (1) sprint in training in the last six months. I've also consumed rather a lot of beer, with the emphasis on 'a lot'. I suspect it says more about the strength of the field, the beer and my new bike than it does about my sprinting abilities, but hey, I'll take it.

Sunday: had to help out at our demo day at Thetford Forest. I left Bath at 5:30 and didn't get back until 9pm. But I get Tuesday off in lieu, in addition to Monday. Almost like having another weekend. No Easter eggs but.

Back in business

First race, back in the money. Gotta love that. And on my Ridley Noah, which is a very, very nice machine. As I hoped, it has the same smooth handling that the Damocles had, but it's also very stiff. No wonder McEwen likes it.

Weather perfect: 19, sunny, not much wind. It should stay like that over Easter too. Pre-race preparation: going to the Porter until midnight but not drinking beer. That was a significant break from the activities of the previous 11 days.

The race was at the Castle Combe motor racing circuit, which is about 3km around, very wide, non-technical and has some slight undulations. The finish straight is gradually uphill, which I was told is hell when there was a strong south westerly blowing.

I procured a Chippenham Wheelers jersey and pinned three lots of numbers on it. I made the mistake of putting warm-up balm on my legs in the canteen area. They didn't like it. I love it though - it always reminds me of the start of a Belgian kermiskoers.

We had 54 starters for the Elite/1/2 race (they tend to chuck all the top divisions in together) and two others from Chippenham: Andy and Ben. My plan was fairly simple: sit at the back and get some training in, and maybe have a couple of digs. That's exactly what I did, too. I love it when a plan comes off.

Our race was 17 laps (51km), with three primes. I knew it was going to be hard to get away on this circuit, so I just assumed the position (last) and watched little breaks go and get caught in the opening laps. After about three or four laps, the whistle blew. I know what that means: there's money on the line at the end of the next lap!

Instinct took over and about halfway through the lap, I decided I'd better move up to see who was going for the prime. Towards the end of the lap, there were a couple of small groups off the front, so I decided to test my sprinting legs for the second time in six months and took off. Caught the first group, which sat up, so I continued on to the next lot of three. They were urging each other to roll through, with the finish line about 300m away.

Bugger that! I put in my third sprint in six months, and no-one came with me. Big gap. Well, if that was a prime, then I'd definitely won it. Cool!

After that I got sorta carried away with the moment and kept going instead of sitting up. Two others came across, and we stayed away for the next couple of laps. But I knew it was going to be rather hard, and the bunch came back to us.

Soft pedal to last position, wait for the heart rate to get back down to 150 and enjoy the lack of scenery.

A few laps later, nothing had gotten away. My ears pricked up when I heard the whistle go again. I was a little cooked from the first effort, but the lure of lucre was too much and I started to move up with about 1km to go. This time, there were three or four guys serious about getting the prime, so I jumped across to them with about 500m to go. They started sprinting from fairly early, so I stayed on the wheel of the quickest guy, undergeared myself a bit, but still got around him in the last 50m.

It hurt a bit, but I was chuffed. I didn't expect to win two primes at all. Andy and Ben said well done as I drifted past them to the back again, feeling a bit knackered. It probably wasn't the best place to be to get in the winning breakaway of 13-14, which went a couple of laps later. Oh well, I didn't expect to get in that anyway. Andy managed to, and ended up a very creditable fourth.

Once I recovered a bit, I had a go at getting across what looked like too big a gap. One other guy came with me, but he couldn't do strong turns. We got within 5 seconds before he blew, then I blew and that was that.

I moved up for the sprint for nothingth place (they don't pay top 30 here) - more for the practice than anything else - and got 6th for about 20th in the race. 43.5km/h average, which is not surprising on this circuit.

It definitely feels good to be back.

Talk Show Host

Yeah.

I've come to the conclusion that the Schwartz burger is the best burger in Bath. Even when you've had many pints, you can still taste them. And they still taste good. Expensive but.

Caught up with friends of the family John and Jenny this evening and It Was Good. Must have been close to 10 years, and that's always interesting to cross that gap. Then - and this was several pints later - the other John and I caught up in All Bar One, along with our semi-regular riding companion Kirsty, who was there with her rowing mates. The place has no soul and no acoustics, but it's smoke-free. Roll on July.

The weekend should be full of off-road fun, as we're going to Afan (in Welsh Wales) for some off-road fun. That's two lots of off-road fun in two days in Welsh Wales. A tip that I remembered from last time: Don't drink the coffee.

Non-random observation: I am in danger of getting fit. Next Friday: first race in six months at Castle Combe. I have my cat. 1 licence and my Chippenham Wheelers membership and I'm not afraid to use them. I think the base fitness is there, but it will take a few races before I'm back up to speed again.

Non-random observation #2: Daim bars are so good.

Yeah.