Not sure that frustration truly describes the overall feeling at present, anyway since the broken chain incident, my bike has been at the bike shop and as reported below needed a new bottom bracket - so imagine my despair / annoyance / boiling anger (delete as applicable) when not only did they not have the correct size in stock they also managed to then order the wrong part in as well so here i am 5 days later still awaiting the return of my trusty steed.Hopefully tonight I will regain posession and will be able to stretch my unexercised legs over the weekend. For purposes of statistics week 6 will be null and void and any scraped together accumulation of miles will be carried forward into the week 7 report.
As an additional carrot i have decided to do what i did for my London to Paris trip in 2007, that is set myself a target of miles to cover pre-event. Now 2 years ago i fell slightly short of my target to hit 4000 miles in the first 6 months of the year including the L2P trip. Indeed compared to then my current mileage since Xmas of 624 is some way adrift of the 903 i had covered in 2007. SO in an effort to balance a realistic target against a figure that is still a challenge i have plumped for 2500 miles to be completed inclusive by 29th May, which leaves me 1876 miles to doing 13 weeks which is 144.3 average per week. Further to my earlier post on all things euro you will be interested to note that i make 2500 miles roughly 4000 kms (see what i did there?)
Now based on work, family, weather and other issues my mileage will not be a constant 144.3 every week but will vary considerably but it gives me a personal challenge within my training to achieve. In amongst all this i will be varying my routes covered both in terms of length of time / distance / hills etc.
Finally on the basis I have almost certainly become something of a fat boy this week, I will be psoting my weekly weight and the net gain or loss thereof - as it's Lent I have also given up biscuits at least for the next 40 days or so which having checked with the official adjucating body excludes me eating cookies / rich teas / digestives et al but not energy type bars which will prevent me hitting the proverbial wall whilst on my bike.
On the upside - total funds raised so far are up to £180 and i have obtained some new Discovery Channel Kit (Shorts / Jersey) reminiscent of the 2007 TDF where they had a green kit rather than the traditional blue.
Thanks for meandering through this post with me? More next week
