The Lost Weekend

If it had included a piece of exercise that burnt more than 3 calories I could have described it as a low intensity training break. But who am I fooling? It was a five day blank in my carefully planned pre-ride regime. A big FAT zero on the training chart.

And it all sounded like such a good idea - a long weekend trip to the spiritual home of cycling, just as the countdown clock on my LEJOG ride started to tick a bit louder. But when the bike hire failed to materialise at the same time as our fast-drinking, big-eating friends did, the writing was on the wall, and it spelt ‘Fatty drunken loser’.

Not that the weekend was without urgency. Oh no. At one point we had one hell of a scramble to get from our three hour lunch at a fish restaurant on the coast to our table at the local pizzeria on time for early evening meal. And just in case you thought that was on foot or on bike, no it was in a car, windows down, shades on and horn blaring - like you do.

Nor was the weekend totally removed from cycling. On more than one occasion we sat behind a frothy cappuccino and hefty danish while we watched the catwalk cyclists of the town cruise down the beautiful leafy main street...and back again - just in case anyone had missed them the first time around.

We were also in same location to watch them return that evening, this time we were behind a pre-meal bowl of peanuts and foaming Peroni. I gathered quite a bit of useful information from my pavement cafe vantage point I can tell you. I learned new shapes in the art of cycling poise, I saw bikes that looked as though they must have cost more than my house and I realised that never ever would the raggle taggle team strip modelled by Bike Buffoon be acceptable in this land of uber cool.

So the weekend was not quite a total write-off as an important stage in my ride preparations. But it did come close, and only time will tell how beneficial those five days off the bike, litres of vino rosso, gallons of lager and mountains of pasta on a bed of pizza will be, come May 22nd.


Jez