Friday 21 June 2019

Road books, bicycles and all things French...



On the biking front I planned out the second of my road book training events in the Peak District, essentially last years route in reverse with a few extra green roads thrown in. On Good Friday I headed up to the Peaks for a final recce and surprised myself by managing 10 hours riding on the day. Needless to say I wasn’t in a fit state for much at all on the Saturday!

The following weekend was my annual trip up to Leicestershire and Rutland to assist in the running of the Rutland-Melton International CiCle Classic, now Britain's biggest (and arguably the best) one day cycle race. Now this involves two days of setting out the course and usually involves knocking in dozens of wooden posts for direction signs, sponsors banners, rope and tape barriers etc. This is achieved with a slide hammer but was quite evidently an activity completely at odds with myasthenia! Repetitive muscle movements especially of the shoulders and arms bring on severe fatigue very rapidly so this task had to be left to others and I spent a lot of time driving the van, so at least I got spend a lot of time sitting down!

The race went well with a major change to the route this year that seemed to be a great success and certainly changed the character of the event. 

It also gave me the opportunity to recce some potential routes for the road book training event I have planned in this area for August.

I wasn’t able to take part in the Peak District road book event the next weekend myself as I was off on another holiday. Our friend Mike had arranged a surprise holiday at a friend’s villa near Carcassonne in South West France for his wife Linda and asked if we would like to come along?

Not only did Linda not know where she was going but she didn’t know we were coming too, in fact Mike only announced we had “offered” to drive them to Luton Airport to save the cost of a taxi on the morning we were leaving. We managed to keep the subterfuge going right up to the point we pulled our bags out the back of the van in the car park!

A very different holiday to Italy with relaxation very much the name of the game, lie ins, leisurely lunches, historical sites, picturesque villages and a drop of wine (or two) were the order of the week.


Once back home again I started preparing for the Rallymoto Wales 500, a report on that will be appearing soon 



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