Mt Ventoux

It's official - Mt Ventoux will be the penultimate stage of the TdF next year and the Etape - the amateur stage - will ride it on 20th July. I've always wanted to ride that climb and our bike shop (www.cyclefit.co.uk) may well have some slots up for grabs. Anyone fancy a trip to Provence next July?

Chasing shadows

We've been getting the long miles in on Sundays - luckilly the weather has been kind and its been generally dry, sunny and calm. Because its rolling hills where we live we've been going over to the USAF base where it's flat as a pancake and just getting down on the aero's on those long straight fenland roads - very like Arizona but no desert and a lot cooler!

To try to mimic the Arizona heat we've been riding in extra clothes - including winter cycling jackets over our jerseys.

The land out there is reclaimed from under the sea - so the roads are just above sea-level (not exactly Boulder!) and one afternoon as the sun got low I was cruising along and noticed my shadow riding next to me but a few feet below me in the field. It was great to just cruise and check my cadence & position by looking across at my shadow in the adjacent field ... if it had gone past me I would have been really worried!

Normal service resumed ....

Sorry about the long delay in updating the blog but the past few weeks have been somewhat hectic - and the next few will be something to write home about too!

After our trip to Madison the next thing on our agenda was the Cologne Marathon. We had planned to drive over to Germany but a fire on a freight train in the Channel Tunnel put paid to our plans and we managed to get a cheap flight at the last minute. This was our third outing to the race in Cologne and each time we go we seem to take more and more friends with us - we are starting to feel like the Pied Piper!

The weather was awful - cold and rainy - just when your clothes had dried out from the rain it started raining again! The marathon doesn't start until gone 11:00 to give the real head-cases a chance to run the Half Marathon first ... there are even some who enter the HM, then the 42km inline skate race and only THEN do they run the marathon!

We were on for a comfortable 4:30 but things went west around 16 miles and we slowed to a crawl for a while - finally came in at 5:15 - as we crossed the bridge over the Rhine with 1km to go the speakers blared out "The Final Countdown" (I love "Euro Pop") and Didi Senft "The Devil" from the Tour de France was there in his devil outfit to cheer us on!