Sore Bums!

So much for a good nights sleep. The thing about a long bike ride is that you sweat. Therefore you spend a lot of time taking on liquid to make sure you dont get dehydrated. On the ride yesterday and after I got home, I drank just under 5 litres of liquid (a combination of carbohydrate drinks, protein drinks & electrolytic drinks). Unfortunately if you dont get the timing right, and sweat off all the extra liquid you've taken on board, your body has to get rid of it some other way.

Therefore I did not get the good night sleep I had hoped for!

Joining John & Tim for breakfast, I was complaining about my bum. It felt uncomfortable enough to share my discomfort with some other guys - you know? Anyway John piped up that he thought it might have something to do with the saddles, which Tim & I found most insightful.

Simon had fixed his tyre, so the 7 of us were up, breakfasted and ready to go by 7am. Just before setting off Henry stated that his bum was so sore that it felt like he had been violated in his sleep.

We spent some time trying to decide which of Henry & John's observations were the funniest.

The good news was that as soon as we set off, I realised that in fact the pain in my bum was not as bad as all that. Nope - it was much worse when I sat back on the saddle!

We did my 60 mile loop over the 5 mile ascent between Borden & Hindhead. On the way up that hill, after about 40 miles, Henry's knee started to get very painful & Ciaran's rear sprocket broke hence they both had to drop out of the training ride. Hopefully Henry's knee is just because he did such a big jump yesterday in terms of his longest ride.

Back at the house again, we stopped for some sandwiches & a drink. If it was hard first thing this morning to get going again after 150 miles yesterday, it was even harder to get going again this afternoon having done that PLUS 60 miles this morning already!!

Still, set off we did, and we completed the final 50 in 3 hours which was pretty good. This time Ciaran & Jules followed us around for much of the route in a car to get some more photos.

250 miles this weekend. The longest I've ever done, and the most I will do prior to the ride itself.

Yikes.

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....