The West Riding

The excitement's building chez-moi at the moment.  We're off on our week-long cycling holiday to The Netherlands on Wednesday, and the weather's supposed to be super.  We took the jalopies out last night, primarily because the missus hadn't ridden her bike for about 18 months and wanted to reacquaint herself with the physical sensations, both good and bad, associated with cycling.

We didn't overdo it, however.  We rode to a pub about two miles away, had a pint and ambled back.  Very jolly it was too.

A Tizer Do Little

It's a gorgeous day here in London - a proper summer's day, with powerful sunshine, genuine heat, humidity, you name it.  It's also a Friday, and two of my long-standing and esteemed colleagues are leaving the firm today.  They've booked some space in a bar to mark the occasion, and I cannot not join the throng to wish them both bon voyage.  But I cycle to and from work.  So you see my problem, I think.  No?  Well, I have to go for a drink with an army of people I know well and like, on a beautiful summer's day, and drink no more than one pint.  That's the thrust of the dilemma.  As soon as a drop of cold beer hits the tonsils, I'll be raging a battle royal of wills in my head. 

There's nothing for it.  I cannot leave my bike at work over the weekend.  It might be pinched.  And on the other hand, I have to watch out for crapulent cycling bravura.  After a couple, most cyclists believe they can negotiate rush hour traffic without a problem.  They can't.  I cycle home along some extremely busy roads too, so it's doubly important for yours truly that the reflexes be at their sharpish when commuting - particularly on a Friday, when the world and his wife are leaving London.  Also the heat makes people drive like twats.  So one drink it is.

Usually, it's young men who react the worst to heat and motoring; they charge around the carriageway without the requisite skills to control their vehicles.  This might only present a problem to their no-claims bonus should they slip up, but for me it could mean a fortnight in traction.  That's why cyclists get so annoyed when motorists fcuk-up.  Your retuning the radio to Chris Evans whilst thundering along Stratford High Street at 45 miles per hour plays fast and loose with my well-being, not yours.  Man-up, you coward.  If you want to piss your physical health up the wall by engaging in dangerous pursuits, then be my guest, but don't drag me into it.  I'm not interested; I just want to get home to the missus and watch Have I Got News For You.

Thanks.

Unidentified frying object

Well, well, this is turn-up for the books: the sun has decided to put in a fashionably late appearance at last.  The previous couple of days in Londres have been warm, warm enough to inhibit restful sleep.  But that's all right; I welcome humidity-based fatigue.  It's part and parcel of the whole summer thang.  It's due to slip a bit at the weekend - naturally - but there it is.

Anyhoos, it's someone else's concern come next Wednesday as the missus and I are off to the Netherlands.  Please, please let it be warm and dry there too.  I'm not a vindictive man by nature, but it would break my heart if it were nice in Blightly and shit were I am.  I'd become unbearable in the situation.  More unbearable then.

Ride like the wind

Vindication!  My plan to monitor my pacing at last night's time-trial worked a treat.  I posted a season's best time, some 32 seconds quicker than last week, and in much less promising conditions.  The bit of advice that did it for me was from British tt legend Matt Botterill.  He said you need to go out gingerly, so that "you'll be surprised at how easy it is initially".  That quantified the effort required for me, and gave me licence from the top to take it easy.  Previously, I'd be beset by doubts - "I'm taking it too easy" etc., and find myself upping the pace and going into oxygen debt by lap three.  Once you overcook it, your race is run.

Another added bonus was that despite riding considerably quicker than I had before, I felt better afterwards.  I only entered the red zone in the final half mile.  This was enough to ensure that "left it all out there", i.e., I couldn't have gone any quicker.  But it also meant I didn't hang around in the danger zone long enough to do any real damage.  Result!  I rode better and felt better.  Can't wait for next week now.

I must resist the temptation to reward myself by buying loads of extraneous cycling shit as a reward for my efforts, however.  I must.  I must.  No, no, I really must.  Ahem.

A bit racy

Another short post this afternoon.  I'm off time-trialling this evening, and as usual the nerves have kicked-in already.  I can't concentrate on my work, and I've got scant resources left to scribble thoughts either.  I'm feeling unjustifiably buoyant and optimistic about this week's event.  Don't know why.  It's possible of course that this the fate effing me about, and that I'll be overtaken by a frail-looking eleven year old.

I'm determined this week to ride my own race, ignore the others, keep my form and my concentration.  I've decided to decrease my cadence (my pedalling rpm) and up the gearing.  I think this will help.  I used to pedal a very high cadence bee-in-the-dee, but I think I've lost that elasticity as my vo2 max has diminished.  The vo2 dropping is an age thing, so there's nowt I can do about it.  I must adapt in other ways therefore.  I think a drop in cadence will lower my heart rate a notch.

Let's see, shall we?

Animal Magic

The missus and I went to the zoo yesterday afternoon.  It was one of those meandering, largely aimless weekends, which although initially fun, starts to drag a bit come Sunday afternoon.  We needed some structure, so I suggested we pop along to poke fun at the furry inmates for a few expensive hours.

And expensive is what it proved to be.  Forty-eight quid just to get in the door.  And you can't stare at primates for four solid hours without a mug of tea or two, so that's another few pound crow-barred out of the hapless visitor.  Still, it's only once in a blue moon, so what the hell.

As with most things in life, the best bits weren't as the marketing people would have you believe.  The lions, tigers etc. tend to be rather underwhelming in my, extensive, zoo experience.  They're felines, and as anyone who'd owned a cat will testify, the genus is famed for its ability to sleep.  They do like a nap, your big cat.  Chances are then, whatever time of day you pitch-up, the giant mogster is wont to flat out on his back, with crosses for eyes.

No, the best viewing is to be found elsewhere - the butterfly house for example.  Did you know there's a transparent species of bf?  Me neither.  There is though.  It's tiny and for the most part see-through.  There's just a faint dash of visible pigment along the outline of its minute wings.  A beautiful and extraordinary animal.  Also, you're able to wander around their environment, as they flit and go about their business, oblivious to your presence.

After the butterflies, it's off to watch the bats.  Bat's, like big cats, do enjoy their sleep, but the bat house is darkened to make the leathery flappers think it's time for school.  There is something amazingly eerie about watching a large bat fly.  Something about it just strikes one as wrong.  The most entertaining thing they get up to, however, clambers around the ceiling of their roost.  The ceiling is lined with a metal grid; this allows the bs to walk along it, upside down.  They have hooks on the ends of their limbs to facilitate this.  It's very engaging viewing.

And finally, you simply have to see the monkeys.  And I do mean the monkeys.  I can take or leave the great apes.  The show never matches the billing when it comes to apes.  And their enclosures are always too crowded with punters to be fun.  Stick with the little primates.

The squirrel monkeys are absolutely charming.  But the best exhibit was the mangabeys.  We spent a precious and joyful ten minutes watching a mother mangabey  unsuccessfully try and teach her baby daughter, Delilah, how to eat a root.  Delilah only had eyes for the teat though.  Eventually mum caved in and allowed her to suckle.  All this took place about two feet from where we were stood.  We could see all the tenderness that makes even small primates like these chaps seem so human: the eye contact, the caresses, the hugging.  It was priviledge to witness.

Obsession pour hommes

I'm off to the Olympic Velopark again this evening after work.  I've become inseparable from my heart-rate monitor of late, and I want to try and do some structured zonal training.  I've also discovered that one can hire a time-trial bike at the track, which I'm itching to do.

I've really become obsessed with 'testing' this year.  I used to practice this dark art bee-in-the-dee, but it served solely then as an easy entrée into the world of competitive cycling for me, a poor cousin of road racing.  Bunch races require serious commitment and organisation - not my strong suit.  A tt, however, is much less judgemental.  You can turn up on what you like, having done as much or as little training as you like.  You can't do that at t road road without looking a like a prize twat.

In the past, this low-tech approach to tting was enough for me.  I'd ride as hard as I could for 20 minutes and hope for the best.  Technology has moved on immeasurably in the last 15 years though, and now I wouldn't dream of riding without a hear-rate monitor and a computer.  These days, I know what exactly what lap I'm on and exactly how close to my threshold I am.  One's 'threshold' in cycling is that point beyond which one blows a gasket.  Steam can often be seen issuing at pressure from the ears of reckless cyclists who stray too close to it.  The idea of course is to get close enough to it to minimise one's race time, but not so close as to deplete the resources so greatly that one is reduced to communicating for the rest of the day by arching  eyebrows.

This evening I will be riding in zone 4, which is 2 below pulse Valhalla.  I'm hoping it's easy to sustain, but not sp slow as to cause offence to other road users.  Time, and the heart-rate monitor, will tell.

A bit long in the tooth

I'm off out to meet a former colleague for a drink this evening.  It never is a drink, of course, but several drinks.  The English and their euphemisms, eh?  I'm sufficiently old and honest with myself to admit that I sort of dread events like this now.  I used to love them, in my salad days.  But latterly, I just want to have a couple of pints of an evening and cuddle up on the Chesterfield with the missus and episode of Inspector Morse.  

I suppose this is simply an example of life preparing me incrementally of an eternity of oblivion.  The avenues of pleasure become narrower and narrower as one ages, until eventually you lose the will to go on and willingly turn up your toes.  A propos of this, I believe Kenneth Williams' last recorded words where something like "Oh, what's the bloody point?".  Shortly thereafter he swallowed a heroic dose of prescription drugs and died.  Whether this was by accident or design, we shall never know.  But what is clear is that he was increasingly embittered by life toward to the end.

In order to cope with the contradictory demands of revelry and my increasing sociopathy, I set myself a limit of how much I can drink.  This is fine if I know I can shift more than the other members of the party.  Tonight, I can't rely on this physical advantage.  My mate can drink, and quickly.  I don't.  In cycling parlance, I'm a diesel, not a sprinter.  So I'm going to have to manage the situation using slight of hand and misdirection.  Both of which I'm shit at, by the way.

I will only judge the evening a success if I don't have a hangover in the morning.  I'll get back to you on that.

The gulf in class stream

As an added little incentive for me to look shit last night, British aspiring neo-pro Tao Geoghagen Hart unexpectedly turned up at my regular Tuesday night 10.  He's still only 20 and still looks like a child to mine eyes, TGH, but when he threw his leg over his bike, he was untouchable.  He completed his 10 in 20:42, which is the fastest time I've ever seen posted at Eastway.  He left some very competent and serious testers for dead.  No-one could live with him.

His strength and speed was doubly impressive - firstly because it appears to be summoned from nowhere.  He must weigh 10 stone sopping wet, this lad, and he has zero upper body definition.  He doesn't even have the barrel chest of most great time-trialists that presages a massive engine; secondly, when he came back to the signing-on room to hand his number in, he clearly hadn't been anywhere near his limit.  He'd been riding within himself.  His ordinary, however, was beyond the ken of anyone there to witness what he did.  

What's more, he's a climber; he's not even considered a strong tt-er among the rarefied ranks of the neo-pros.  He's very talented, clearly, even among his elite cohort, and has placed in some very prestigious amateur races, but that's no guarantee that he'll make the step up to full pro.  And if he does, will he have enough to make it into a UCI World Teams squad?  This is the highest division of pro-cycling teams.  And if he does that, will he make it into the grand tour squad?  And if he does that, will he make it to 'protected rider' status, or simply be a humble domestique?

This illustrates the quantum vide that exists between professional cyclists and the rest of us.  I could not have matched his average speed for the entire ten mile event (29mph) for a single mile.  My fastest speed, at the bottom of a fast descent, was only 30mph.  My average for the whole shebang was 22mph.  Now, admittedly, I could improve my times a lot by training properly, getting a time-trail bike and losing a stone, but I still wouldn't get near him.  He simply produces too much wattage.  And all the motivational babble and bullshit in the world turns to quivering shite in the face of cold, hard physics.  It would be like telling a motorbike rider on a 250cc machine to 'believe in himself' when racing against 900cc-equipped foes.  Belief, like flattery, gets you nowhere.  It's power-to-weight.

Anyway, the beauty and point of time-trialling is to race oneself.  Just as well really because I'm unlikely to catch any other bugger this season.

Bike D. Eisenhower

Three weeks tomorrow (but who's counting?) marks the first day of my first major holiday of the year.  The missus and I are off to The Netherlands for a week's bike touring.  The Tour de France starts there this year, so they're going to get motivated by watching the shaven, oiled pros do their thang first.  Thereafter, it's a joyous week of pootling along well-appointed and safe cycleways from city to city, stopping only en route for excellent Dutch coffee and cinnamon biscuits.

There is nothing on Earth as enjoyable as arriving at your destination under your own steam, carrying your own luggage on the bike.  You feel tired, yes, but not jaded or disspirited.  On the contrary, you feel absolutely alive - your senses singing with information.  A quick shower the slough off the muck and it's on to the hors d'oeuvres and drinks.  And they, believe me, never tasted better.

Before I can enjoy the genteel face of bike culture, I must endure a few more weeks of racing.  I say 'endure', but the truth is I'm enjoying it more and more as the weeks go by.  It's always like this, competitive cycling.  It's miserable when you're not fit enough, and one always begins the season not fit enough.  It's nigh on impossible to recreate the intensity of racing when training.  But I'm finally starting to feel some power in the legs.  Also, the mental aspect of the game is sharpening up too.  My concentration is must better, as is evidenced by my changing perception of the length of each race.  At first they appear to last for months, but as you get more and more in the zone, the duration drops dramatically.  Last week's race was over before it began.

I'm hoping to get so fit I forget the whole thing one week.

Tat's the way I like it

The wife and I took part in a neighbourhood jumble sale on Sunday.  Everyone in our locality was invited by the residents' association to put a trestle table in his or her front garden and hawk all the shite that each had accumulated over the years.  It was tremendous fun.

As well as off-loading some detritus, it gave us all an excuse to sit in the sunshine for a few hours, sip tea and chat to one another.  I seem to recall people did this without an excuse when I was a boy.  The summer months then were largely spent sitting in the front garden, chin-wagging with the neighbours.  It was nice of experience a reprise of this ancient and life-affirming practice.

It does amaze me that we fetishise and fret about alienation and the unhappiness this engenders in society.  But instead of address the causes, we simply contrive chemical stopgap solutions.  Feeling alone?  Have a happy pill.  Have you spoken to your neighbours recently?  Try it.  Take an evening class.  Join a swimming club.  That should keep you off the Temazepam at least until Advent.

Cher, cher, cher, cher, cher, cher...changes

I was pondering the nature of my misery the other evening.  I won't lie to you, because I respect and love you, but I am a melancholy chap by nature.  And as one's nature is immutable, this has always been the case with me.  I wish that it were otherwise, but it ain't.  That's why I give self-help and positivity short shrift.  It can't work because it relies on the subject being able to change an intrinsic trait.  That cannot happen.  You might as well produce a book that claims it can make the reader shorter, or change the colour of his eyes.

The only way to deal with a pessimistic bent to the be disciplined.  One must simply get on with things that one finds boring, or worse, fear-inducing.  That's the downbeat's lot in life, and it's a negative feedback loop of course: the more one does this things, the more miserable one gets, but at a slightly slower rate than by not doing them.  Miserable, eh?  

I overcome the ennui of the day-to-day by filling my every waking moment with mental and/or chemical stimulation.  Sitting and meditating on life is an absolute no-no.  That way, disaster lies.  This is starkly at odds with the prevailing wisdom de nos jours, which advocates inwardly-directed practices like transcendental meditation and mindfulness in place of  outward-facing ones like trampolining or adultery.  This universal clamour to self-examination is akin to suggesting that everyone should take up base-jumping or try acid because some people gain pleasure and insight from these practices.  One-size does not fit all.

The problem with this condition is that it gets worse the older you get.  The reason for this is that less and less changes in your life as you age, and change brings at least the possibility of improvement.  As you get older, you move house more infrequently, don't change careers, find new sexual partners.  You don't even make new friends; you just gain colleagues or people to hang about with.  This statis has a depressive effect on everyone.  That's what the midlife crisis is in effect.  But for the depressive, beginning from an already low happiness quotient, its net effect on the psyche can be disastrous.  

The same effect also explains why lottery winners and Olympic gold medal winners experience feelings of sadness and loss in the immediate aftermath of their seeming good fortune.  Olympians think that winning medals will fulfil them and give them purpose for the rest of their days; the rest of us think we'd be happy with a shitload of money in the bank or a solid-gold car.  It also explains why people buy bigger and bigger tellys even though the programmes get worse and worse.  "I'd be happy watching Britain's Got Talent if the screen were 14% bigger."  This, I'm sure you'll agree, is a floored and fanciful notion.

What a depressing thought...

Horses for courses

I was reading an article in Cycling Weekly earlier, my preferred organ of record on these matters,  about a club cyclist from Rotherham who's just broken the world record for distance cycled in a week.  He covered 1758 miles, this chap.  In a week.  Don't bother; I'm waay ahead of you - that's 252 miles a day.  When asked if he'd experienced any hiccups (sic) during the week, he gave up the following gold-plated quote:

"I had a bad day on Tuesday. I fainted after a massage."

As well one might.  He's not a pro, by-the-way; he does this for a hobby.  He was also riding circuits, not place to place.  So he didn't even have  the satisfaction of reaching a new town each day.  What was he thinking about as he pounded around for hour after hour?  Not much, I'll warrant.

I torn between admiration for the endeavour and horror at its utter futility.  Like darts.

A couple of years ago, I had a bit of a dalliance with distance cycling.  I was getting bored of race training, and I thought I'd have a crack at the Dunwich Dynamo, a 120-mile overnight ride from London to Dunwich in Suffolk.  By way of prep., one Saturday in high summer, I rode from my home in London to Maldon in Essex and back, a distance of 90-something miles.  I immediately vowed never to do another long ride unless there was a valid reason for it - touring, for example, or fleeing toxic fallout.  

These days I like my bike rides like my women: short and sadistic.

The need for speed

I need to go quicker.  It's a month into the time-trial season, and I'm not tearing up any shrubs.  I'm still a full minute slower than I was this time last year.  This despite the fact that I'm on a better and, you'd have to hope, faster machine.  Perhaps I'm over thinking it?  Perhaps I'm not?  Perhaps both?

Last night's attempt at cycling immortality was actually faster than the previous week's, but not by much.  Worse still was the fact that I felt like I was flying, and yet I still could not break the mythical 28 minute barrier.  I used to post 27 minute times at a canter and think very little of it.  What's happened in 12 months?  I'm probably lighter now than I was then.  Maybe I'm being too conservative.  Maybe I just need to give it the beans, as they say.  That said, I was shattered by the time I sprinted across the line last night - absolutely spent.  I don't believe I could have gone harder in the final 2 miles had someone pointed a blunderbuss at me.  I need, I think, to get angry, like Mr T.  I might black up next week, to spur myself on.  On second thoughts...

So, off training tonight.  I really should apply some science to my training, but it's turgid stuff, to be honest.  I'm not sure I could put myself through it.  What I do need to do is improve my VO2 max, which is about as much fun as it sounds, by the way.

Ho, hum...

North by north east

Today is my first back at work after a 4-day break in North Yorkshire.  It's the first time I've ventured so far into the county; we went right up into the North York Moors National Park.  And as always with Yerk-shuh, it was even better than I'd dared to hope it would be.  The scenery, people, historic sights, food and drink were all exemplary.  I could happily spend my dotage in Yorkshire I think, and I speak as a dyed-in-the-wool smut-faced cockney urchin.

The great thing too about Yorkshire is its sheer size.  It's England's largest county, and by a mile.  And within its generous boarders, there is a wealth of variety.  Cityscape, countryside, peaks, valleys, coast, moorland - if you want it, Yorkshire has it.  Finally, it's a place that esteems tea and real ale above all other libations.  This just about pops the tin hat on it for me.  It's my kind of place.

There was a fair bit of drama, along with the gentle walks to and from pubs while we were there.  Driving back to York to deposit the hire car yesterday, we witnessed a Land Rover and trailer of cattle overturn on the A64.  It's very hilly around that part of the country.  I didn't see what caused the spillage, but I did see it happen.  Two cows went scudding across the carriageway at a fair old rate of knots.  Luckily, the other road-users were alert to the danger, and none of the bovines was hit.  In fact, they didn't seem hurt at all.  A motorist who stopped obviously knew his cow onions and corralled them into a neighbouring field for safe-keeping.  The driver of the Land Rover also appeared unhurt.  He scrambled out of the passenger door of the vehicle, which was now moonlighting as the roof.  I read later on the local newspaper's web site that indeed none of the participants in the prang was hurt.  Phew.  Moo.

So that's Yorkshire for you.  It's like Las Vegas, but with flailing, confused livestock instead of topless dancers.  LV's loss.

Dancing in the street

Summer's arrived!  Well, it is June.  Finally, but finally the sun is generating some heat.  Today it's 27 degrees in the capital, and you can smell the optimism in the streets.  Everyone has a spring in his or her step, and feels emboldened.  "Work can fcuk itself for a few days" seems to be the prevailing philosophy.

This does have a dark side though.  The English are wont to drink like teenagers in a suburban bus shelter when the sun is high, wide and handsome like this.  Then they get dizzy and aggressive.  Not nice.  Luckily, the missus and I are off to the north this evening, where it's cooler, both meteologically and figuratively.  There'll be no crapulent sunstroke in Yorkshire tonight, thank Christ.

As per I've spent a king's ransom on nibbles for the journey, and I'm not done yet, by God.  The plan is to get some refreshing white wine at Euston, so it's nice and cold for the start of the journey.

Hurrah for the summer.  Hurrah for the north.  And hurrah for a couple of cheeky days off.

Stuff and nonsense

I treated myself to some new pedals and cycling shoes today.  This on the basis of last night's 10 at the Olympic Velopark, which was as slow and painful as childbirth.  Why did I do this?  Well, I suppose it's partly a material requirement.  My current shoes are showing their age, and they're really not fit for racing.  But mostly it was because I wanted to nail my colours to the mast and make a public declaration of my status as a racing cyclist.

Given last night was excruciating and to date the slowest 10 mile time trial I've ever completed, this might strike the onlooker as odd, but it makes perfect sense.  Racing cyclists revel in physical discomfort.  It's part and parcel of the game.  The argot of the sport is shot through with references to suffering and masochism.  When one or two cyclists gather together, you'll quickly hear references to "seeing stars" "turning myself inside out" or "blowing up".  Last night we each of us knew he was about to enter his own private Golgotha, and that drew us together as a group.  "We happy few, we band of brothers."  It was joyous.

All I need to do now is bring my new shoes out for a spot of training - the hard part.

Diarist manqué

Bah, I didn't post an entry yesterday, in spite of its being a workday.  My usual regime requires that I post something on a workday; I'm excused high days and holidays.  I'm flesh and blood, not a machine.

I did, reader, have the best of intentions.  I couldn't update the diary before leaving work (my preferred method).  I ran out of time last evening as the forecast suggested it was going to shat down in the early evening, so I didn't want to hang about and get caught.  "No matter", I thought.  "I'll do it when I get home."  Home, where my toys are.  Needless to say, that didn't happen.  Apologies.

I'm reading a book about Peter Cook and Dudley Moore at the mo.  It's not particularly well written, but the story is interesting enough for one to forgive the prose.  What's particularly interesting is Peter Cook's diffidence about himself and his talent.  He always get portrayed as having a very patrician hauteur about him, PC, but people who knew him, particularly those who knew him before be became famous, recall a much warmer person than that.  I love finding out that my heroes are nice as well as talented.  It gives one hope for the future of the species.

Cook, like a lot of that golden Oxbridge generation, fell into the business of show by accident.  Both he and Jonathan Miller had no intention of becoming performers on leaving Cambridge.  Funnily enough, John Cleese was the same a couple of years later.  Despite a successful Footlights career as an undergraduate, Cleese applied successfully for a job with a London law firm on completing his studies.  He only postponed this for what he thought was a short theatrical jolly with friends.  It's still on deferral.

I wish shit like this would happen to me.  That's the difference between Oxbridge and redbrick I suppose - serendipity.