It’s all cycle-logical.  T-minus 5 days to launch.  Part 7: The Hunger Games

‘I don’t have a problem with anabolic steroids, I have a problem with chocolate digestives.’  Kirsty Wade

Woburn: recent stamping ground.  Obliging tiny red stag in the background.  The deer have nothing to fear from me: you hit a deer at speed that's yourself and possibly the deer written off too...

Handy link for D-Day:  Live GPS tracking at http://nedtrack.com/ejg2l/

So, a final discussion before l(a)unch.  Entirely randomly I’ve landed up with the only thing left to discuss (very loosely): food.  See what I did there?  Launch, lunch…oh forget it.

Quieter week for me: half-term means the Empire Strikes Back; a chance to do all the sociable things I have been less able to do.  As the hard work is all done, that's fine.

All work food has long ceased to be of use, which has been a great excuse to ditch it.  There are fringe benefits to all this training.  Need more smoothies, seed mix & tasty salads but I don’t mean I’m necking millet from the pet shop…

One of my musical heroes, Bruce Dickinson of Iron Maiden recently recovered from throat cancer.  Bear with me!  An articulate guy, he described the process of the body rebooting itself after the oppressive regime of chemo as turning him into a ‘metabolic hummingbird’.   This is a very poetic way of describing how tempting it is just to rage through the food cupboard on returning from a ride like a plague of rampaging locusts.  Can we get something decent in first before falling upon the chocolate?  Less hummingbird, more Zombie Thirst.  Appropriate given the season.

I didn't spot it until after the London Hundred this year but after guzzling sticky sweet gels and snacks all the way (jaffas, fig rolls etc) you just start craving something savoury with a bit of salt.  Muscles shutting down…demand salt!   Like jumping into a vat of olives and chorizo.  I don't mind too much after four training rides back-back but I do still feel the call of the Kit-Kat.  We're not monks and if you've earned it, you've earned it.  A slight violation of the 3Cs rule I know.

What…hang on…the 3Cs rule?  Let me explain.  Chips, Crisps & Chocolate.  Capitals.  That’s it, the greatest evils to avoid if you’re that keen.  This wisdom comes from Kirsty Wade; known to me as Aunty Kirsty, veteran of Team GB in middle-distance running in the Barcelona ’92 & Seoul ’88 Olympic Games.  The era of Gunnell, McColgan, Akabusi & Christie.  I’m biased naturally, but I partly grew up on tales of athletic derring-do and proudly went to school in the Barcelona Olympic 1992 GB Squad raincoat, so I picked up a few nuggets along the way, totally disregarded until now.  Disclaimer: for the purposes of this exercise and as far as I’m concerned, the 3Cs does not include cheese, that would be a truly awful sacrifice too far.

Kirsty gives me the best excuse for the weekly inspirational quote: ‘I don’t have a problem with anabolic steroids, I have a problem with chocolate digestives.’  An amazing sound-bite, printed in The Times a few years ago in an excellent article by Matthew Syed.  He wrote a piece on the subject of athletics and its dope-addled 80s.  Which became the dope-addled 90s, which became…you get the message.  It's still going on.  David Millar (a sporting hero of mine) makes a very good recent point in that our noble sport is now the only one that has really had a purge, laid itself bare and is trying to repair.

A friend asked me to accompany them to donate blood this week.  No way!  I think we’re too deep in this world of masochistic daftness as it is, without being a pint down on the start line.  I’ve worked hard on this product and the Blood Service, though honourable, are having none of it.  Since we’re discussing food this week, I registered with the National Blood Service as a student because you got a voucher for a free tub of Ben & Jerry’s.  Which confirms two things: students do have principles…but they’re thinly veiled.  The unexpected fringe benefit was: the subsequent Friday night was a lot cheaper.  That’s all I’m saying.  It is Halloween after all, which gives me an amazing idea for a seasonal blood drive…are you thinking what I’m thinking?

As of now, we are like astronauts in quarantine, training is no longer of any real benefit.  If we can’t do it now, we never will.  The idea being, any last-ditch attempts to cram will only enervate instead of leaving you fresh and elastic.  Theory only….it worked well enough in school for all of us didn’t it?  I will quite enjoy a short breather.

Continuing the space theme…  During a rocking-out period this week Planet Rock played David Bowie’s Space Oddity.  Not too much of a Bowie-ite but the lyrics ring a chord, pre & post next week.  I’m not suggesting it’s a veiled reference to the Tour de France but the first lines could be:

Ground Control to Major Tom

Take your protein pills

and put your helmet on

Ground Control to Major Tom

Commencing countdown, engines on

Check ignition and may God's love be with you

 Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six, Five, Four, Three, Two, One, Liftoff

This is Ground Control to Major Tom

You've really made the grade

And the papers want to know whose shirts you wear

Now it's time to leave the capsule if you dare

Let’s not mention the lyrics change tack a little at the end.  Good luck team & see you on the start line.  A lot of good progress has been made over the last six weeks on all fronts, so now we just have to go and do it…chapeau comrades!