As some of you may know, I have entered a 6 day mountain biking event that crosses the border of Poland and the Czech Republic numerous times, goes through some caves and will generally be pretty damn hard. To be honest I have never trained for anything before really, maybe par getting in some riding 2 weeks before I have to do some sort of event.
Compared to the other 5 guys going from Edinburgh, I’m very unfit … Ken was the Scottish Road Race champion one year, Lawrence is of similar fitness, Dougal has raced the SXC for years, Tom has been doing 24 hour races solo (continuous riding!), and my partner Oli is just plain strong and races at junior level.
So for the first time in my life I have been forced to train for something, otherwise I won’t finish - pain now will mean less pain later. To be honest I have no idea what I’m doing either so I just go for different rides of varying lengths and intensities, but generally with a large emphasis on keeping going and continuous effort.
I have modded my mountain bike … its codename is now Jey-1 (Just winding Timbo up here!) … check out the fearsome bar ends!
Also went for a bike ride into the Scottish Borders yesterday afternoon, passed the spot where I saw a dead motorcyclist a month ago in Yarrow valley … there was only a bouquet of flowers by the side of the road to indicate the prior carnage.
