babychaos's blog

10 days until I fly out, and this will probably be the last blog I do before I head off...

Once I've finished Ride Across Britain I'd like a bit more than sore muscles to show for it. Quite aside from being slightly damaged in the head department, I'm also a card-carrying geek, so it's to be expected that I shall be logging and blogging the trip.

First off, it's now only 32 days to go until I kick off on Ride Across Britain, which is both exhilarating, and terrifying. I go through daily fluctuations between wanting to get on with it, and being utterly feaful that I haven't done nearly enough training.

It's not raining, and according to my garmin I've just been out cycling in temperatures in excess of 15'C, which is T-Shirt and Shorts weather in my book.

...and, following on from that, how I really struggled to come up with one that was, and was fun.

I'll be referencing what I shall refer to as "the L4D Boardgame", which doesn't exist, but various design notes and thoughts can be seen here.

The snow seems to have held off a little in the past month, so I've been working on getting some mileage out of the bike. It's still been stupidly cold, and wet, and windy, so it's been a long way from pleasant, but it's important that I get myself moving now, so I don't suffer too much in June.

It's been a tough month if you're keen to be outside training. We've had just shy of a foot of settled snow in Berkshire, combined with a shortage of grit meant pretty much impassable roads. The snow has left (for now), but it seems to have left behind some fairly epic potholes, and vast amounts of crud on the road in the way of stones, grit etc, so cycling contineus to be a challenge...

Well, it probably will be...I doubt I'll be organised enough to do another one this close to the end of the year.

In August I did my first 100-mile cycle, and it very nearly broke me. I suffered horrendous saddle sore, had a huge calorie deficit, and pushed my knee over into injury...it really wasn't pleasant. I'd quite obviously ramped up my distance far too quickly.