I’m not sure why, but as we get fitter (it’s official - Sam, our personal trainer checked!) we seem to get even more clumsy. Our most recent trip out on the bikes was a bit of a disaster, with David and myself taking the brunt of the accidents.

We’re still hitting the hills to try and build some climbing stamina, so we headed off from Hythe last Sunday and made our way up towards Lympne castle, taking in some off road, then round to Elham and back round to Hythe. About twenty miles in total, but oh….what twenty miles!

Within 2 miles I was off. No, not off like a rocket, not off like a race horse, not off like a firework. Off my bike! Thankfully on grass, and only because I’d forgotten about the new clip-in cycling shoes David and I had invested in. Trust me, not the most stylish way to dismount!

After a few more miles of off-road (our first, and not our last) we headed through Stowting and at a sharp bend Dave decided to snog tarmac. The Lewis and Little Jason roving road block halted yards in front of him and having no time to unclip from his pedals he crashed really painfully into the world’s highest kerb. I was planning to do an A-Z of our training experiences (eg. A = accidents, B = braking hard on every hill) as a diary entry next week in the run-up tot he race, and after hearing David’s language as he sat on the offending kerb gripping his badly grazed and swelling leg, I have the letters C, F, K and S sorted out already. Potty mouth!

After getting gingerly back on his bike David led us around the next twelve miles with no problems, until we did some more off-road coming down from the Shorncliffe barracks into Hythe, when a sudden fork in the path, prompted an instant stop and a spectacular flatliners shunt. David again came off worst, falling over his handlebars onto his shoulder. He was very helpful as he lay groaning on the muddy ground, helping me with letters D, T and W. To be honest, he went down so hard that I didn’t expect him to get up in one piece. He did, and with a body buzzing with adrenaline headed off at pace and got back to the cars five minutes ahead of the rest of us.

Now, I’m not a nervous guy, but I’m really worried about any of us hurting ourselves in the final training sessions. With just ten days to go it would be heartbreaking for one of us to come a cropper and to not be able to do the actual race! To make it worse the boys are out kayaking tonight without me, so I’m hoping we can avoid a drowning! Now that certainly would put us on the back foot for next weekend!

As I mentioned, only ten days to go until the big race, and I think we’re all starting to get VERY nervous indeed!

Watch out next week for a daily update of our training progress. We’ll keep you up to date with everything, as we go.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 27th, 2008 at 10:27 am and is filed under Race The Sun 2008. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.