Monday, August 25, 2008

What a difference a day makes Pt 2


Good ride today -- aside from the Mercedes incident; warm, still and dry -- and my body vaguely obeying my instructions for once.

Which was a relief, because Saturday was a stinker.  We were in drought-stricken Andalucia for the worst period of the British "summer", but it's still been a fairly miserable couple of months.

Saturday, though, dawned clear, cold and bright and with a definite feel of Autumn in the air -- probably my favourite time of year. 

But I was pedalling squares all the way.  Slow on the flats, wheezing on the hills and struggling into the wind: a bike ride is normally guaranteed to cheer me up but as the ride progressed I got steadily more crabby.

Even the sunshine in Richmond Park failed to lift the gloom and I became increasingly, irrationally irritated by, in no particular order:
  • People riding Cervelos in full CSC kit
  • People riding really slowly on full-aero time-trial bars
  • People with v-shaped, twin water-bottle holders behind their saddles
  • A really fat bloke with ultra-lightweight carbon racing wheels -- c'mon, City Boy, even you can see the inherent logical flaw there, right?
  • The two oldish riders sitting outside the cafe in perfect, retro Italian jerseys -- loudly discussing the relative merits of vintage Campagnolo groupsets (although only because they reminded me of the sort of dreary misanthrope I could probably become unless I got my act together pretty quickly)
So glad that normal service was resumed today.  Measured your quads yet?









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