I’m ready to start. Maybe not in terms of having done all the preparation I need, and certainly not in terms of having done all of the training I need, but mentally I am at the stage where I just want to start racing now. Unfortunately, I still have over three weeks to wait.
Or maybe it is fortunately, because I won’t be waiting, I have a lot left to do. The good news is that I have been riding my bike. Finally on the weekend I got it built up and took it for a spin late on Saturday night in the freezing cold and the dark, but with my beautiful bike building assistant coming along to rescue me if it turned out I’d forgotten to do up a bolt somewhere and the whole thing fell to pieces. The good news is, I hadn’t forgotten any bolts!
At that stage it still needed quite a bit of tuning and niceties like bar tape and getting lining the handlebars up straight, but most of those things are done now. The cables are all still about 3 feet too long, but they will be staying that way for at least a few days, and I have been riding and enjoying the bike. It feels great! I need to get my lights happening over the next couple of days and a few other tweeks, but basically it is rolling along.
I’ve got almost everything I need to take with me too – a few last minute realisations but everything seems to be coming together and arriving in time, so I’m pretty happy on that basis. My route planning still needs work – this may be what I spend most of the next weekend on but the good news is that the next edition of the race manual came out last week so now I know where all of the checkpoints and compulsory sections are. I have some approximate routes, I just need to make a few decisions and then check that I haven’t accidently picked a main highway, a goat track or a road I’m not allowed on.
Right now my biggest worry is getting sick, and I’ve been feeling pretty ordinary today so I’m heading to bed now to try and get a lot of sleep! Don’t forget to subscribe to get all the news as I write it!
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Is that like 3-bajillion tiny little LEDs in the front wheel? Or a magic spell cast upon it? Or something boring like a reflective strip?
It’s just a reflective strip, but I’m pretty sure that they used a magic spell to apply it!