Beware of Cyclists

Thanks to James and Paul for the picture, it seems good advice. I recommend anyone near our route to heed it next week.

I got this quote from Paul by email:

"Got more mud on the red orange yesterday at Ae. Very rainy. A good experiment to understand the impact of vertical precipitation and muddy terrain on morale and general physical wellbeing. A strong negative impact as it turns out. Seeing as the mud didn't seem to respond to my swearing I directed it at my brother. Who didn't either. F@!$*r. I'll try and take it in turns to swear at the two of you. Although Nik I'm sure it will mainly be your fault"

Which is nice. He should have been 'beware of cyclists' when he agreed last year is all I can say!

I have cycled/trained very little since the south downs way a couple of weeks ago, I could find excuses like work, family commitments etc. but basically I couldn't be bothered. 

Panic buying has begun in earnest now, I should get 4 sets of brake pads, a new tyre and some leg warmers (Leroy?!) delivered tomorrow. Ollie is kindly going to lend me his pimpy light tubeless wheels, if he remembers to bring them in tomorrow. 

As is always the case with these things, I think now I should have/could have trained more, but completing the SDW gave me a boost of confidence. So I'm quietly confident, ignorance is bliss they say, having never ridden in the lakes before I really don't know what to expect, but hey, we've got all day, every day. I may swear too on occassions A.Wainwright may be the primary target of the abuse though.

When we set off on monday morning we'll think of Roger as he goes into surgery for his knee op. Hopefully he'll be riding again by the end of the summer, but he'll have to take it easy for a while.

I seem to have got to the point in my preparation that I have so many lists I need to have a list of lists. I've also started looking at the long range forecasts on metcheck.com, that was a mistake definitely, wet is a word...i feel more panic buying coming on.

A note to Mum, look after yourself and I hope the new laptop is still working. xxx