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....