Be Realistic Ask the Impossible: Train in Vain

Righty....

Another two weeks fly by in the twinkle of an eye.... each passing day of forced inactivity weighing heavier on the mind as I project myself forward to the Etape.

I finally got my bikes delivered to me this week after much stress and fretting incurred by dodgy couriers; my lovely fillet-brazed '87 Mercian Professional thankfully intact against even all my expectations, diligently re-assembled and primed to face the great unknown that is London cycling... The Garmin is dusted off and courses loaded... New shoes and pedals have been prudently ordered and received, cleats fitted, float tweaked. Snacks and supplies are purchased in gleeful anticipation. Orange and Cherry High5 Zero tabs plopped into the water bottles (pretty disgusting by the way lest you make the same mistake). I abstain from heavy drinking the night before (just a few glasses of vino, really quite moderate by recent standards) and the alarm is set for 6.30 am to give me the best chance of negotiating the madness that is London traffic and getting to blow the cobwebs off my legs without heavy traffic pounding by.

Bleary eyed but determined I emerge from the shed at the bottom of the garden (I aint joshing you, that's where I'm staying till I get my own place sorted. It's a posh shed though so no stig of the dump comparisons if you please!) and creep into the dawn like a reticent badger. It is bloody cold but I have my crimbo pressie Torm baselayer and warmers on, Baa Baa merino hat and and super-roubaix everything, so I put faith in the fact that I'll warm up on the bike. It starts to rain softly just as the front door clicks behind me and I eagerly set off full of much anticipation of this long delayed ride...

Although I am no stranger to travel or living in a new places, there is something I find particularly disorientating about London geography as out of the center there seems to be little by way of visual landmarks on the horizon, so having the map feature on the Garmin is a big plus for me as other than running errands for my job and the small chunk of local area I've covered so far on foot or public transport, I have really limited knowledge of London and its surrounds. I settled on a moderate 70km spin out into Essex the night before having surfed for local knowledge and courses, and my Garmin should be guiding me along this route like a laser guided missile, albeit a budget rip-off one that is much lacking in velocity.

Instead, it has made its own plans and is soon bleeping at me like an electronic veal calf before freezing and glaring at me with defiance. Slight problem.

Turn off, turn on, reload. Again. Again. What a pain in the @rse, and whilst I am fully prepared to admit there is a reasonable chanceit was my ineptitude, I suspect it was just the cold wreaking havoc with its inner workings. All the while I'm blindly navigating surprisingly populated roads (in Glasgow the only objects in the streets at 6.30 are either people drunkenly weaving home from a nights debauchery looking slightly shell shocked, or mischevious looking foxes) to try and find the carefully planned route that takes me along nice, quiet B-roads and country lanes.

Eventually I lose patience with the Garmin, after all we don't need these gimmicky 'tools' for bike riding, do we?

The four hours of desperate, bone-chilled charging about that ensued was not the ride I wanted to say the least, and saw me take in some rather less salubrious sights than I had desired in the shape of major A roads, industrial estates and housing schemes, as well as experience the mind boggling logic of the cycling infrastructure that is in evidence in and around this fair city, and left me rather shell-shocked as opposed to relaxed or confident. Indeed, rather than preparing for my bid to ride the Etape I am am now brainstorming to help British Cycling bring the Tour de France to London again-my favoured marketing angle so far is plugging the stage as an individual TT following actual cycle paths around London.  Now this might not sound like the most appealing or exotic of cycling spectacles,  so bear with me as this is how I envisage it: 

Marketed as a kind of hybrid of Paris-Roubaix and the Tour of Oman but featuring more day-old kebab meat (the Paris-Roubaix comparison being the bumpy, debris strewn paths, and Oman being the perplexing amount of sand and grit that is in evidence on them), this would be particularly challenging as the riders would have that added Rubix Cube factor (or Roubaix Cube as I'm now calling it) of forcing the riders to use their problem solving skills in determining where the paths suddenly disappear to, which one of the contradictory signs is actually in effect (if any are there at all), and the best way to avoid the puddles, broken glass and McDonalds wrappers rising up to greet them. The carbon monoxide levels out there might mean that Dennis Menchov isn't the only 'Silent Killer' out there to wreak havoc on the peloton, but I'm sure he'd relish the challenge as much as anyone-even if his lung capacity is somewhat reduced as a result.

Perhaps I'm better off figuring out my Garmin or fashioning it a little striped sportwool scarf to keep it warm (although I'm worried Wapha might sue me for impinging upon their relentless pursuit of marketing territory and sole usage of that most complex and distinct of patterns that is now somehow supposed to encapsulate cycling's eternal soul, the single stripe.)

Striking much less deeply into exotic Essex than I'd desired, I eventually called it a day when I could no longer feel my hands or feet and it started to rain again, filled with a sense of disappointment and a slight tinge of failure. However, by the time I actually got home this was mercifully just replaced by rage, as when going back through Tottenham and Clapton, apart from being again put at the mercy of seemingly malicious urban drivers, I also happened across one smug looking tw@t pushing his neon accented urban 'fixie' across the road in a manner that was as bold as it was slow, as if doing his best impression of a ketamin abusing peacock and seemingly so thrilled with himself that it was of little matter I was almost wiped out, first by the car tailgating behind me, then the impatient car he'd blocked from getting out of the garage... Somehow I can forgive other cyclists much less easily for such careless road manoeuvres.

As it is the only climbing I got to do was over intercarriage bridges and speed control bumps, though when I eventually flopped my chilled carcass into a steamy bath and reflected upon my experience with a huge milky coffee, I was really just rather thankful I'd made it home at all, but once again warm and ensconced in my shed I am already scheming my next foray into the great unknown, though this time with printed map for tech-support...

The gloves are off, London.