The aftermath

Well it's three weeks since we finished the ride and life is slowly returning to normality so I thought I'd blog about  the aftermath of the ride.

The evening we finished was a cracking night with a meal and plenty of booze which considering I was out of drinking practice I'm pretty pleased that I didn't fall asleep in the toilets (unlike someone I could mention).

Monday morning was 9am start from the hotel in Thurso and back on the tour bus - to be honest it was on the bus and into bed for a few hours for me. We stopped north of Edinburgh and I decamped from the bus said my goodbyes and got in the van with Billy as I was getting dropped off in Carnforth rather than going all the way to Warrington.

It was great seeing Julie again and after saying farewell to Billy it was off to the pub for tea. According to Julie I was in the pub with her but my eyes were somewhere else. After the pub it was time to go home and start life without Hugh. Opening the back door it was horrible not to have him waiting for us and the house seemed really empty and big without him - looking back I think the house seemed big and empty after living on a bus with 15 people. One other thing that was a bit strange was not having to hold on whilst making a brew.

Going back to work wasn't fun either and it's taken two weeks for me to get back into the swing of things properly but now life has returned to some sort of normality even though some things still set me off getting upset about the dog.

As for the cycling - well I hate to say it but I lost all interest for it. I think I was more tired than I thought but now we have hit July I'm about to get back into the groove and start a training plan going back to basics with my endurance. My wife has also ordered a bike through CycleScheme so it will be good to out together.

I have no immediate plans for anything else really this year apart from some time trials but I really want to do a nice LEJOG ride for my 40th in 2013 so I need to keep up the work. I neglected my calorie counting for a couple of months before the ride so I'm going to get back onto that as I feel I could be a reasonable climbing if I lose the weight.

Finally I've decided to keep on going with the blog as it will motivate me to keep on training.