? May 2007 | Main | July 2007 ?
June 27, 2007
Tour de Yanda part deux
On Sunday I ride one of the stages of the Tour de France. Tours are often won and lost by margins of minutes or less (Greg Lemond won the 1989 Tour by a margin of eight seconds) and by the time I get to Canterbury I will be more than six days ahead of Ullrich and the boys.
This year Le Tour begins in London and there is a cyclosportive event that will allow 5000 deluded amateurs like myself to pretend they are Lance Armstrong and do the 200km route from London to Canterbury a week before the real thing. Of course, being as the stage is in the south of England rather than the south of France, it won't exactly be hilly, but it will be long.
I've signed up along with the Crazy Landlord and some of his work colleagues. Our team name is "Tom Waits for No Man". The landlord informs me that he expects a couple of his colleagues to be playing the role of Tom in this scenario, while John and I are likely to be cast in the role of those they won't be hanging around for. I.e. they are REAL cyclists. We, apparently, are not.
I've been working hard to prove him wrong. Yes, I've been doing a lot of cycling, but more importantly (and far easier) I've been doing a lot of shopping. In the past couple of weeks I've bought some "Brave Soldier" scrotal lubricant, six items of blue lycra, a heart rate monitor, and some sickeningly sweet carbohydrate drink powder. Now that's an odd juxtaposition of words: carbohydrate, drink, powder. Surely, they are not all describing the same thing?
Oh, and I also bought a new bike. I had to buy one, you see, because the day after I signed up to do the ride, the frame on my old bike cracked. Admittedly, it has since been replaced under warranty, but if that wasn't a sign from the credit card gods, I don't know what is.
For a while I suffered under the delusion that this might be a turning point in my life, and that after London to Canterbury, I might take up full-fledged racing and would desperately need a carbon-fibre or titanium piece of art weighing less than a dozen pounds but costing several thousand. In the end, I bought a steel-framed light touring bike. It can still take panniers and proper mudguards and is reasonably comfortable for long rides, but, crucially, it has drop handlebars and LOOKS like a racing bike. And that's the important thing, isn't it? Not to look like a complete fool? Although, in that case, perhaps the matching blue lycra was a mistake.
I've also been doing some serious research on the race. One of the first things I discovered is that it is French. So, as part of my training, I've just spent the last four days in Paris eating croissants, pain au chocolat, and big slabs of meat slathered in thick creamy sauce. Unfortunately, this means I've also spent the last four days off the bike which isn't ideal, but training is all about obstacles and sacrifice. Sometimes, you have to let the little obvious things slip in order to firm up your bigger overall strategy.
Posted by YandaMan at 10:55 PM