I've been bad...

I've been rubbish, actually.  At keeping up my training and this blog.  When Brian Washingmachinepost kindly enquired how things were going, I realised that my e-mail reply wasn't much more than a list of excuses and moans.

I've moved house.  Which has brought with it untold chaos, deep in cardboard boxes and paint-tins.  Just finding the basics of life (clean cycling kit for instance) can take hours.  Through a mixture of advanced planning and straightforward awkwardness -- my bike tools were kept out of the hands of the removals men and travelled with me in the car.  However, our Hungarian decorator has taken to prising open paint-tins with my Campag cone-spanners.   

Another bizarre result of moving is that -- for the first time in 20 years -- I've stopped reading The Comic.  It used to be delivered  every Thursday along with the paper,  but no newsagents in our new part of South London actually deliver to your door. Too dangerous, probably.  So far, I'm not missing it.

I'm trying to launch not one, but two new businesses:

www.parkinsonmedia.co.uk

www.thinkagainmedia.co.uk

...which is proving to be fascinating and exciting but massively time-consuming.

I've just been on holiday.  The annual family ski-trip to one of my favourite parts of the world -- Northern Sweden.  I'm not sure it's possible to become bored with powder snow, stunning mountain scenery and beautiful blonde women --- but if it could happen anywhere, Sweden would be the place.  While Boonen was sprinting for victory at the Roubaix velodrome, I was dodging moose on the E6 back to the airport.

And I've picked up an injury -- an inflamed shoulder.  According to my osteopath, a classic cyclist's problem -- decades of hunching over dropped bars have left my upper body so tight that a minor ski-ing knock has refused to heal -- there's almost no room in the joint for the muscles to recover.  Nothing that a few sessions of expensive and painful bone-crunching won't fix.

And finally -- I forgot just how much I relied on commuting to keep my fitness up -- fifteen miles most days on fixed at least kept things ticking over.  Now I'm working from home, it seems a real drag to have to get my kit on and get out on the road.

But that's enough whingeing.  This afternoon, I put my To Do list to one side, stepped over the cardboard boxes and went for a ride.

And it felt very good.  Watch out, Tom -- I'm back.

Perils of the Peloton Pt .1

In his excellent book The Escape Artist, Matt Seaton briefly touches on an issue of concern to all male cyclists -- shrinkage. This is, of course, a straightforward physiological phenomenon. At times of extreme effort, or extreme cold, the body is designed to channel blood and its vital oxygen to those areas which need it most -- in cyclists' case, usually the legs. It takes the blood from those areas it regards as superfluous -- fingers, noses and private parts.

So it is that after a particularly long or cold training session you find yourself with numb fingers and privates so shrivelled that you resemble a skinny Action Man doll.

In many ways the body is right. Cyclists are a weedy, asexual lot -- not renowned for their lustful behaviour: some old school pros believed in the theory that too much duvet activity had a detrimental effect on your performance the following day. They feared, as boxers did, "leaving their legs in the bedroom".

The legendary Sean Kelly once admitted abstaining from all such nocturnal functions before races -- for different periods depending on the length and severity of the event. One journalist calculated that -- taking into account the Grand Tours, the Classics, the World Championships, late-Summer criteriums and a couple of Six Days -- there was a good chance that Kelly's wife of several years was still a virgin.

Not everyone was so austere. Jacques Anquetil liked to prepare for a race with "a bottle of good burgundy and a woman", but he made both his daughter-in-law and his stepdaughter pregnant so was hardly a role model. Mario Cipollini was once asked whether he abstained from sex before racing. No, he replied, but I try not to have it while I'm racing.

I was reflecting on all of this as I surveyed my sadly depleted body after another long, cold training run this morning. How a sport that requires you to wear the most figure hugging and revealing of kit can leave you with so little to display.

A while ago, I bought a smart jersey and shorts combo from Dauphin Cycles near Box Hill. They are well made and stylish -- but with one fundamental flaw. They are almost see-through, especially in the wet; and pale blue and white are very unforgiving colours.

Unless, that is, you're Tom Boonen. Which is another reason -- along with his talent, palmares, money, and 16-year old model girlfriend -- to hate him. How can I put this delicately? Even after several hundred kilometres of racing and a full-on sprint, no matter how nippy the weather -- when Tornado Tom crosses the line and flings his hands in the air, he appears to have a toddler's arm stuck down his Quick Step shorts.

Put simply, and I apologise for offending more delicate readers -- Tom Boonen must have a huge cock.

The internet, a wonderful source of knowledge. I'm sorry for the slightly unfortunate tone of this post -- tomorrow I'll review dynamo lighting systems or something.