WWJVD....

There's a Cycle2Work scheme we have at work where you can purchase a bike without paying tax.  You basically pay the value you borrowed minus the tax, so for example if you borrowed £1,000 the maximum you pay back is £780 or there abouts.

So last year I did this and spent a lot of money on a mountain bike... just to discover that I didn't like mountain biking.  With hindsight, I really shouldn't have bought that mountain bike.  It was handy for about 6 weeks where the Gidds had to Frankenstein the Dawes so his bike would work for last years SBS Challenge ride.  However - I've only used the mountain bike three times for it's actual purpose and hated most of it.  So it's fair to say it was a very stupid buy so I'm a bit weary of doing something as silly again.

The thing is though... and this is the crux.  We were discussing this in work and I thought that I had another 6 months or so on the scheme so we were talking about what kind of bike we would get... And I said I'd get a Brompton - I could still get the car into work with the GB in the morning, and then cycle home without having to wait on him.  They're designed so you're not going to mangle your work trousers in the front cog, and if I really couldn't face it I could still get the bus.  Same as, I could cycle out to the pub, stay 'till past closing and still get a taxi home - me and the bike.  You can even rig them so you can pull them around like a trolly into shops and stuff.  Then I e-mailed the lady who organises these things and she tells me that my last payment was this month...  That the new schemes payments comes off in August... and I'm still in nice time for ordering now...

So I'm asking myself What Would Jens Voigt Do? Does he even own a Brompton?  Would he even care? And why did he call his dog Lynda?

Jx

Change is as good a as a rest...

...they say.  So I've been gardening and - as the Giddy Blonde has suggested - prematurely aging with BBC Radio 4 in the background.  Have been having some time off the bike, and found that I'm missing it.  We were pretty wiped after the etape even though this year's been one of the easier years, and just a spot of pottering for me and surfing for him (well, he's been out once so far). 

I've managed a couple of sessions on the turbo trainer.  You wouldn't think to look at me but apparently my body thinks it's some sort of well-honed machine; any more than a week off I seem to gain an extraordinary amount of water and go all 'wobbily' and uncomfortable.  Just the one sessions enough to take the swelling down in my legs - keeping in mind I get so sweaty the backs of my hands pool water.   It's probably more akin to a damm with a tiny little crack in it and the turbo sessions is the wee man with his finger over the hole.

I've been doing cadence sessions in an attempt to make hills easier.  I'm going off the ethos of spinning away at hills instead of trying to stamp them out.  I'm doing 90-100 rpms, building slowly up to a complete half hour.  It's basically a kind of time trial session where I keep the steady pace - and I'm finding it harder work than I thought (but I am only doing the one to two sessions a week at the mo').  I've started to do a warm up, not included in the main session, then I spin up to 90+ and try and hold that for as long as I can.  It's quite interesting, considering my heart rate starts at 174 bpm but when I finish it's 194 - I am a tiny wee person and our apparent top heart rates are scary, mines is 206.  I think the first session I managed 4 miles in 25 minutes (including warm up distance - I don't really know what that was).  Last nights session I managed 6 miles so it's getting better.  I've recorded my sessions on Garry so you lucky lucky people (person... Hiya Da'!) will get to see the details.

Jx

Just to say....

You'd think that I'd be able to do sit ups after cycling 80 miles a couple of weeks ago...  My abs say NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

Jx