It's August!

Time flys. Soon it will be early Spring. Adi reckons it's early Spring now but I like to think of it as late winter with the possibility of early Spring. But whatever it is I have decided to make it the official beginning of my race preparation.

 This was prompted by my long lost nephew Rob encouraging me to meet up in Picton (a small fishing / sailing town ) for a 1st reunion. My brother advised me that I had a new nephew this time last year when I was cycling in Wyoming and desperately looking for something made in the US that I could take home for a souvenir. So two thoughts were in my mind a bit last year as I cycled across the cattle lands. One that amazingly I had a nephew I didn't know about, and two that it was bloody hard to find anything made in the USA anymore.( I found a knife, fork ,spoon and can opener combination by Browning in the end which should serve me well next year).

If you look closely at my blog you will see I have added a weekly training distance table. And I will not cheat on this. If I haven't done the km's I wont manufacture them. As you can see 300km's last week. Next week we will see. But Picton is about 130kms away and I'll stay over night and cycle back the next day. Should be nice if the weather plays ball. Or horrible if it doesn't. Rob's going to bring his bike over from Aussie for the meeting so I hope the weather plays ball.

Spot the Difference.

In anticipation of my first official training ride I have changed the winter commuting wheels on my M.U.M for my training wheels with 23c tyres. And the Brooks B17 with Milbrook bag gets ditched for a Brooks Swallow saddle. (that's for all you brooks lovers. I hear that Brooks is an official sponsor of the Global Bike Race whatever that means as we hear nothing from organisers).

My winter Mercian is a chunky beast but an old friend none the less. Once you rid it of lights, batteries, mudguards, low maintenance wheels, lunch bag, cheaper brooks saddle and bell it's still a chunky beast but one with a lot less rolling resistance. And one that has taken me on boys trips where my mates bikes were not surprisingly self destructing all over the place. No wonder they used to spend good post ride drinking time cleaning and tinkering on their machines.