A trip to the New Forest

We had been invited to visit our friends Richard and Kirsten in Milford On Sea for the weekend. I did the Google maps search, and found it is just over 70 miles from Guildford to Milford. I decided it would be a good challenge to cycle down on the Saturday and cycle back on the sunday.

I set off around 8am on Saturday, and had just joined the Hogs Back just outside Guildford when I cycled over some broken glass & slashed my front tyre and tube. Although I had a spare tube with me I hadn't really planned for losing a tyre. I called Jules, and she quickly came to my rescue with a spare tyre, tube & race pump. It was around 9am by the time I'd called Jules, she'd found the stuff, come out to meet me and I'd fitted the new tyre.

Based on my previous 70 mile rides, I'd planned on 4.5 - 5 hours, and we were aiming to be there for lunch around 1pm; I was going to be late!

Next I learnt why we are cycling from Land's End to John O'Groats (and not the other direction). People had told me it is because the wind generally blows from the south west, but I'd always thought this cant be that significant. How wrong I was! The wind was in my face all the way down and it was really hard work. I managed to keep a fair speed up, but it was a real struggle; my heart rate seemed my higher that normal, but my speed was slower. I eventually got there at 1:45 after over 5 hours of cycling. Tired and hungry and not looking forward to the return trip.

On arrival I told Richard I had now done around 850 miles on my bike since buying it at the end of December. I was quite pleased with this til he pointed out that I need to be able to do that distance in a week in June. :-(

We had a lovely afternoon with our hosts and the kids, and delicious food. I managed to stay awake and chat as long as the others did, but eventually had to suggest bed (most unlike me to be the first to suggest this).

I was up first this morning. Joseph (Richard and Kirsten's oldest) had serenaded us with his trumpet skills over breakfast, and then dragged me out for a warm-up ride on his bike which was fun. Then JP, a work colleague and friend who lives down the road from Richard and Kirsten, and who had offered to accompany me to Winchester, arrived at 8 on the dot as arranged. After 'Goodbyes' and 'Thankyous', off we set on the return trip.

JP is quicker than I am on the hills. Actually to be precise, he is quicker than me on the flat too, but he is substantially quicker on hills. I tried to blame this on my previous days exertions until I found out that he had gone for a 21 mile run on Saturday which puts my 70 mile ride to shame!! We made Winchester in pretty good time compared to the trip down, and arrived in just under 2 hours. I phoned Jules to let her know my progress, and had a quick snack and a rest with JP.

Having left JP in Winchester I started off on the worst section of the trip down (Alton to Winchester had been really hard work yesterday). It felt like I was flying today. I was much quicker and my heart rate was lower; not having the wind in your face makes so much difference. I managed to make it home in 4.5 hours even though I'd travelled 2 miles further with JP's 'short-cuts' around Brokenhurst & Lyndhurst.

It felt so good to get home having cycled all that way. For a few seconds it felt like a big achievement, then I realised I need to do even more next week....

So long Finlay

Today was Finlay's funeral (see Chichester team training ride).

I therefore worked from home so Jules and I could both attend. This of course meant I could go for a quick bike ride before work instead of sitting on a train!! Hence I set off at 7am for an 18 mile ride. What a great way to start the day. Once again it was cold and bright, and I really enjoyed it.

It's hard to describe how the funeral was. A whole mishmash of things; perfect, sad, inspiring, wrong, I could go on....

As with Fraser's funeral, a number of CHASE staff were present. They clearly go not through any professional obligation, but because they care. Not wishing to intrude on proceedings, they wait til all the friends and family have paid their respects, and then they go forward and do the same.

I found myself afterwards thinking about how on earth they deal with attending the funerals of little children they have become close to through caring for them through their final weeks. I've spoken to some of them about it, and they always say "what about you - you've lost your child", but the truth is we get to move on. They have had such a run of these in recent months, you wonder what motivates them to go to work in the morning.

We've become very close to Finlay's parents, shared problems and everything, and have spent some tearful evenings remembering our boys recently. I was supposed to dial in to some conference calls in the evening, but to be frank the funeral brought back too many memories, so I finished work around 5pm and ducked out of the calls.

Cold start again

I'm not quite sure how, but I managed to get up early and go out on the bike for 40 miles today.

We were going to visit Jules' parents in Farnham, so I found a route via Cranleigh, Loxwood & Milford which made it a decent number of miles. I managed it in 2 1/2 hours which I was pleased with; especially as the hills were bigger than google maps had made apparent!

I learnt some more about my Garmin today. Basically the route was a new one, and since I was riding alone, I loaded the route into the Garmin so it could direct me. I know most of the route, except the bit between Milford and Farnham, where I was hoping to take a short-cut through Seale. However, I did not notice the error when I loaded the route into the Garmin which said "route truncated". It gave me directions all the way to Milford, and then said I had arrived at my destination. Great!! I managed to find my way ok, but ended up doing an extra 3 miles or so.

As an aside here, the Garmin is an excellent device. However the software it comes with is not so great. I have to back up my data every time I use it in order not to lose data for previous rides I've done. Also the mapping software it comes with is rubbish (at least in the uk). Pretty much only the A roads are available, and since most of my routes are B roads for training, you can't plan a route using it. I therefore use GoogleMaps to plan my route, get the url and add the option "&output=js" to the end, save the resulting web-page and then use some freeware called GPSBabel to translate the Google data into Garmin data.

Anyhow; enough moaning. I beat my personal best for mileage again this weekend. 110 miles.

What a great day!!

We had such a great day today.

Everyone showed up at our house for the start of the ride. Rich was first and last to arrive; he got here early in order to do some extra miles prior to the training ride. Everyone else was at the house in good time to set off at 8:30am, and Rich returned from his warm-up at exactly 8:30am. Much credit to Lucy for training him; in the pre-Lucy era, he would have been late!!

We set off for CHASE Christophers, where we were welcomed with tea, juice & Gilly-made flapjacks. It was cold, so we were glad of the tea, and the flapjacks were wolfed down in seconds.

We were greeted at Christophers by Bridget Turner, Director of Care. Also the Mayor of Guildford, Mike Nevins, was there in his mayoral vehicle, gold chain & cycling shorts!! Then Andrew Castle showed up to see us off on our first group training ride. We got some great photos in the shirts that Jules had created yesterday.

After the photoshoot, we had a tour of Christophers. Having spoken to the team afterwards, I know that this was an inspirational experience, and for some an emotional one. Certainly it was a good reminder of why we are doing all this training - not that I needed one given the time I spent at CHASE with Jules & Fraser. The tour included a visit to an empty Mistral room; the special bedrooms where children are laid to rest after they die and before their funeral. When we were at Christophers in Fraser's final week, we got to know another family quite well and unfortunately their son had died a week ago. The combination of knowing their little boy Finlay was in the other room, and memories of Fraser were too much for me, and I missed this part of the visit instead taking some quiet time with Gilly in the sanctuary.

The rest of the tour was fine though, and I was pleased to see the positive reactions the rest of the guys had to the various activity rooms available to the kids and families supported by CHASE.

Around 10am, we set off for Chichester. For the first 30 minutes or so I was cycling on pure adrenalin! It was such a great way to start the day with the tour, and the Mayor and Andrew, but then to be out on the road with the whole team of 8 for the first time just felt fantastic. We have come a long way in 6 weeks.

Ciaran left us at Chiddingfold to go skiing, but seemed really pleased with the team's performance. We got to Chichester in good time, and stopped for drinks and snacks at a tea shop on the high street.

We even got some sponsorship money from some random person on the street - thankyou whoever you were!!! Note to self - be better prepared for this next time we are in a town centre.

On the way back we realised why the run down had been so good; we had had a tail-wind. Hence the ride home took a little longer, but we still managed over 70 miles in 4 hours and 45 minutes which seemed like a good first team outing.

The morning of the first training ride

It's 7am. John & Tim stayed over last night, and we managed to go to bed before midnight and without drinking any alcohol. This may not sound shocking to you reading this, but to me the idea of either of these two staying over and the ideas of an early night & no alcohol are somewhat incongruous.

At 8:30 we'll be setting off on our first team training ride. Simon has planned the route, but I think it involves cycling to Chichester. Take a look on the map....Guildford to Chichester & back....it's going to be great!!

I've had a bad week as far as training is concerned (hence the lack of posts). Monday was a rest day. I intended to Turbo train on Tuesday, but I spent too much time trying to readjust my saddle (it had been moved during the service) and fit my new cadence sensor (which works, but seems to stop the speed sensor from working). Wednesday I'd arranged to meet up with a friend who I haven't seen one on one for ages. Thursday Jules and I went out for a meal for valentines night, which was lovely. We went to Vivat Bacchus; fine wine, lovely food, great service - recommended!

Friday was spent preparing for the training ride today. Jules had been trying to get some tee-shirts done for the team photo, and we ended up buying blanks & printing our own transfers. It took ages!!!

Anyhow - wish us luck!

A well deserved rest

I gave my bike (and me) a well deserved rest today. Having done the longest ride I've ever done on Saturday (exceeding my previous by 10 miles) and my most miles in a weekend (exceeding my previous by 20 miles), I decided it would be sensible to take a day off.

In any case, I had booked my bike in for a service.

I'm not sure whether to be proud or not, but I needed a new chain for my bike. Good old Beyond Mountain Bikes did a wonderful job doing the service, and asked if I had been pushing hard. As you'll know if you read this blog, I've been pushing hard for me, but I dont think in the grand scheme of things I pushed that hard such that I'd be stretching my chain. I can only assume the one supplied with the bike was not that good a quality, and after 600 miles that is just normal wear and tear. Anyhow Beyond Mountain Bikes fitted a new dura-ace chain which is apparently far superior to the one I had previously. They also did a fantastic job cleaning & re-lubing the bike. It looks like new - I felt very guilty for the state I left it with them.

I used my free time to positive effect though, and added the Latest News & Thankyous pages to the website.

Time for a service

I've booked by bike in for it's first service today. I've done 600 miles on it, and I've only had it just over a month. I'm pretty sure thats more miles than I've done in total for the rest of my life prior to that month!!!

I wanted to do a 30 mile ride, so GoogleMapped a route from home to Beyond Mountain Bikes via East Horsley, Ranmore Common, Dorking, Coldharbour, Ewshot & Cranleigh.

I found it really hard to get going. My legs just didn't seem to want to move. After 8 miles or so I turned off towards Ranmore which I had remembered as being fairly flat woodland road. That was in a car. There is actually quite a steep hill before the nice flat woodland road. I really struggled up it. A group of cyclists overtook me on the hill and asked if I was ok!!

I learnt a good lesson today: read the names of the roads before you set off on a route. After the unexpected climb at Ranmore, and having cycled through Dorking I then found myself on the Leith Hill road. Bizarrely that lead to Leith Hill, which I'm sure I remember is the largest hill in Surrey.

Leith Hill certainly made me realise the hill at Ranmore wasn't that bad. I struggled to go fast enough to stop my Garmin going into automatic pause mode.

Once I got to the top of Leith Hill, my legs finally woke up, and I ended up doing the 30 miles in the 2 hours I had planned, despite the hills.

Rest day tomorrow though....

Figure of eight

Paul & I decided that it was high time we did the 50 mile circuit and the 20 mile circuit. So Paul devised a cunning figure of 8 circuit of approx 70 miles which we started at 7:30 in the morning. We were back by 1pm, but had a couple of stops for snacks & drinks, so were only cycling for 4.5 hours. Quite a decent pace - you begin to think that the LEJOG route might actually be achievable after all.

Working at home

I had a slightly odd day today. 6 months ago I booked my follow on appointment for a dental check-up. At that time I was working at home every Wednesday to spend more time in the evening and before work with Fraser & give Jules some extra support mid-week. I would therefore try and book Fraser's hospital appointments, check-ups etc for a Wednesday so I did not need to take more time out of the office and I could be there to hear what the experts had to say. I would also book appointments for myself on a Wednesday again so as not to have more time out of the office.

So today I was working at home on a Wednesday again, because I'd booked my 6-monthly dental appointment on a Wednesday. It's amazing how often silly litte things like that come up and remind you of Fraser.

What it did mean however was that I could go for a quick bike-ride before work. I cycled out to Beyond Mountain Bikes in Cranleigh and back. Found out it is exactly 8 miles from my front door to the front door of the shop. I pushed it a bit harder than normal so I could get back in time to have a shower & start work in good time. Consequently I managed 16 miles in just a smidge over the hour. Very pleased - especially as I did 14 turbo miles last night.

Dont eat your uncle Iain

Ok, today's post wont talk too much about bikes as I need to explain why my nephew Ollie has green poo.

First the cycling update: I was back on the turbo again; managed approx 14 miles in an hour, so pretty much the same as last time. I got home in good time, so was ready to start training at 7:30, but then found I had a flat tyre, so had to fix that before I started. Consequently it is now nearly midnight, and I have finished my training, eaten my tea (pancakes!) and made a few updates to the website.

Jules got me the most amazing birthday cake for my party on Saturday (see photo). I got a piano for my birthday present, and hence the cake is supposed to be me playing my new piano. After the party on Sunday, Tim brought two of his boys (my nephews), Josh & Ollie, back to the house for an hour or two. We had a great time together, and at the end of the day, we let them take some of the cake with them. They were keen to take their icing and marzipan model of Uncle Iain, particularly Ollie.

The moral of this story is: dont eat your uncle Iain, or your poo will go green!

Celebrity endorsements

Today was a good day for Race for CHASE. John Nettles and Andrew Castle have both kindly agreed to endorse the race. They both said some incredibly kind things about Jules and I, and I'm so grateful to them for their support. See www.raceforchase.co.uk/html/celebrity.html to see what they said!

Both of them met Fraser at CHASE when he was alive; those are the kind of moments CHASE give you as a family which you can look back on with fond memories. I didn't meet John, but I met Andrew. One thing I remember about Andrew is that he is substantially taller than I am. Need to find a cunning way around that if we can convince him to do some team photos.

I was reading on wikipedia that Andrew was hospitalised on entering the London marathon a few years back due to dehydration. Kind of makes you think when that can happen to someone of his sporting pedigree. We've already been warned about this for our ride - in fact, we almost certainly will be dehydrated by the end of the day as we wont be able to take liquid on fast enough to replenish what we lose.

John's wikipedia entry is also interesting in that he got married in Evesham which is where I went to school. Small world. It doesn't mention how tall he is....

Life begins at 40

Today I turned 40 years old. I started my new year with a 50 mile bike ride (what else) - hence the first person to see me that old was Simon, who seems to be my de facto training buddy these days. He didn't say I looked old or anything, and none of my joints suddenly gave way on the ride, so maybe being 40 isn't so bad after all.


We set out around 7:30, and the temperature was -2 degrees celcuis. That's quite cold if you haven't tried it. We managed almost exactly 50 miles in just a little over 3 hours, so I was quite pleased with that pace; especially for an old fella.



This is a picture of me on my return when Jules presented me with a pile of cards which all appeared to have the objective of rubbing it in how old I was.

We had a bit of a gathering in the evening which was fun, and I even managed to stay awake after the ride, through setting the house up with balloons and food and drink, through partying til 1:30 Sunday morning.

Got some great presents including 6 bottles of Scotch. Simon got me a head-warmer thing to go under my helmet when cycling....would've been nice this morning! I also got some compressed air canisters for quickly re-inflating a tyre which are very cool.

Oh dear oh dear

Last night was not a good night. I have already learnt that more exercise lowers your immune system, and have successfully seemed to catch every cold going since Christmas. However last night I learnt that it's not a good idea to drink too much either.

It was a work function, and great fun, but I did not enjoy the after effects of the alcohol. I kind of got out of the habit when Fraser was alive anyhow. We never quite knew when we would be rushing into hospital with him, and Jules and I never felt too great about being drunk under those circumstances.

Hence a combination of that, plus me cutting out most alcohol due to the training plan, plus my dumb idea of drinking flat-liners after a few bottles of wine.....nuff said methinks.

Not looking forward to my ride tomorrow morning. Have been trying to counter the dehydrating effects of the alcohol all day....