The 'bonk'

James, Steve and I set out on a long ride on bank holiday Monday (26th), covering a route into Shropshire via Eccleshall, Cheswardine, Market Drayton and Audlem. It was going to average out at 70ish miles and was based on a fine trip James and I had done two weeks before.

Unfortunately, high wind was the order of the day -bits of trees flying all over the shop - and by the time we'd climbed up Cheswardine High St and sat down to our muesli bars, bananas and chocolate, we were feeling pretty tired.

We reached Audlem and 'The Shroppie Fly' at around the 40 mile mark, my legs felt like lead and I couldn't touch the beer I'd gulped down on the previous visit. After lunch we set out again for Mucklestone and Loggerheads. On a long - and to me tortuous - climb, i looked down to see I'd been struggling to keep up with a puncture and a bad case of the 'bonk', when your body has used up all of its available food energy. James fixed the puncture and Steve offered custard creams which helped me get back on the bike. After another mile or so of feeling like I wanted to call my wife to pick me up, I started to regain a bit of form and helped by the encouragement of the chaps got going again.

After a final stop for cake and sugary tea in Eccleshall we made it back to Stone through the worst headwind - and rain of the day. Had some great opportunistic photo fun when we came across a fallen tree that'd blocked a lane, with James lying under the bough and Steve pretending to pull it off him. I'd like to share this episode but James's camera/James/I deleted it.

Steve reckons there are 'lessons' in these long training rides. Todays were " It's windy but you can get through it" and " you can feel like you're going to die and get through it".

I'd left a gap of 4 hours and 40 miles in poor conditions between taking in food and the expert advice is to eat little and often along the way - every 15 miles or every hour and a half in the saddle at least. I'm chewing on Nutrigrains and sucking in energy gels from here on in.

Catching up...

Its been a while so here's a quick resume of recent events. The line up has changed to myself, James and our recently UK citizinized (?) comrade, formerly plain old 'American' Steve. Steve is another superfit, Mark style climber whose disappearing butt will now replace Marks in my sweat blinded eyes.

Mark is now going the distance solo on July 1st. It'll be a test but he'll be fine.

We'll be joined for the first week by Alberto Otero, a Spanish born, former Barcelona FC triallist and deputy head teacher, who can be relied upon to upset popular British mores by bringing pasties into pub restaurants or weeing in car parks. He brings that type of continental elan to the mix, or at least he did on the Ludlow trip 2 years ago.