It’s all cycle-logical.  T-minus 25 days to launch.  Part 4: Pain vs (Marginal) Gain

“When my legs hurt, I say: "Shut up legs! Do what I tell you to do!” - Jens Voigt

Weekly totals are fair.  Have given up all hope of heading out four days in a row, something always pops up, two or three will have to do.  After five solid days in the hot-seat, three rides this week was quite promising.  Reality prevails but we will rally round as a team and get through it.  As we get closer, now inside the last three weeks of decent activity, there are a few little flurries of excitement.  Little bits of kit keep arriving, just a few essentials so something unusual must be about to happen.

Will channel any energy into forward propulsion...

CAVOK; still holding out…!

Subject of the week comes courtesy of a bizarre link, standard for me: pain & brooding.  Imagine being sat up there halfway to Heraklion thinking, ‘ohhhhh I have to sit up for here another eight hours yet and my legs are screaming for some work!’  Having said that, unproductive waiting does make for a good rest.  Music is as much about the rests as the notes, so said my school music teacher and there's a rough parallel there as the muscle fibres knit back together.  All very zen.

Having spoken to a few, I think the astute might say we all welcome facing down a few of our own gremlins, just as we all have our own reasons for tackling this.  My own biggest fear is getting a bug.  And maybe offloading it to others.  As a wise man said to me on joining easyJet, prepare as best you can and then stop worrying: just respond to what you see.

Perhaps subconsciously inspired by a recent visit to the WWI battlefields, on a recent ride I was head-down struggling into wind, darkness growing, late home again, fatigue mounting, legs having lost all their elasticity, the familiar phrase “knock-kneed, cursing through the sludge” popped into mind.  I don’t consciously think of this stuff, just engage a mental freewheel and let the mind run unguided for a change (monkeys & typewriters?!)…I’ll let you decide: ominous but appropriate!

A quick galvanizing snippet of Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est.  Penned in 1917 in Flanders Mud, he is something of a local hero in my part of the world (Welsh Marches).  Reminiscent of that last push for home when you’re hurting, surely?!

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, 


Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through the sludge,

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs 


And towards our distant rest began to trudge. 


Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots 
But limped on, blood-shod.

All went lame; all blind; 
Drunk with fatigue;

Weather still favourable!  What do I know about forecasting after last week's pessimistic prediction?  Nothing I'm proud to report.  If you offered me the chance to start this ride tomorrow in today's conditions I'd bite your hand off.  Chomp...