Training, training and infection

Well last Sunday was the first official training ride for our T2T (Paris to Blackpool) ride in June. With the clocks changing it wasn't a very nice 5am start for me and I really struggled to get my breakfast eaten, porridge was okay but the peanut butter on toast was impossible to swallow.

After an uneventful drive from Carnforth to near Ormskirk, via the delightful toilets in Charnock Richard services, I joined the other 15 cyclists.Things started off fine with my legs slowly coming round after being in the one position for so long in the car but then I made the mistake of waiting for one of the guys on the first little rise who seemed to be struggling a little bit. After waiting we had totally lost the rest of the group and not being sure which left turn was the key to the route we ended up doing 20 miles on our own before meeting up with the others. The rest of the ride went fairly well apart from a couple of punctures, three people falling over whilst stationary and poor communication when someone dropped off the back of the group.

During Sundays ride myself and Tony decided we'd start doing our Tuesday night training rides from work again so that's what we did. We set off just intending to have a chilled out ride but as always seems to be the case on that route the final 10 miles turned into a 10 mile TT with us only being three minutes slower than our best time from last year.

I've had a small lump on the back of my neck for a few years now which has been checked out by the doctor and is a sebaceous cyst. Over the past week the cyst has grown massively and it turns out it is now infected so I'n now on high strength antibiotics. Due to cyst being right on the back of my neck it is very uncomfortable  to sleep on my back and my whole neck has become stiff, my position on the bike also means the cyst is squashed so I'm going to be dosed up to my eyeballs to get through the pain barrier on Sundays T2T training ride.