What with being offshore with work and weekends away etc, time on board my new Gin and Trombones has been minimal - zero in fact. And so it was that I thought it a good idea to 'test' it all works OK after the week long build procedure, on the usual saturday morning road ride.
Arriving at Paul's house and seeing him on his road bike and Adam with road tyres on, I knew it would be a tough day, but in my ignorance, didnt think to change over to road tyres as well, or even increase the pressure to something greater than 50Psi.
The first 40 miles were bearable. There was no chance I could keep up in the usual race for the cafe, but I was willing to accept it. After the espresso and food stop, things rapidly started to go downhill. Pedalling became laboured and forced and I started to drop off the back. Adam did the honourable thing though and helped nurse me back the final 20 miles or so, all the time my legs burning, eye sight flickering and every thought occupied with food.
Saturday afternoon was an exercise in damage limitation as I got the compression tights on and inhaled bags of pasta in prep for the 'proper' event of the weekend - Round 6 of the CXNE series at Bedlington.
With my cross experience pretty limited, I was perhaps a bit eager and made sure I was pretty close to the front for the start.
The start was the usual frantic pace with Neal getting a flier and me perhaps 4 places back, somewehere possibly in the top 20. Neal and me then had a good race, with plenty of position changes - him strong as ever on the flats and draggy parts, me able to make up ground on the climbs.
Paul had another man size slice of bad luck breaking a chain not long after catching me, ending his race yet again. Sure his time will come yet.
My chronic lack of top end fitness reared its head again (as was to be expected having raced no event shorter than 3 hours this year!), but the finish soon came - a bit of a surprise to be honest. 50 minutes flys by at a rate.
No ground breaking results, possibly top 20, but more importantly, the Van Dessel was brilliant and the first race and it's associated nerves is now out the way.
Time to start training for this cross malarky.
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