Not quite spring – but perhaps a very gentle bounce

Rather sums it up – shoots on the rose, ice in the urn in the early afternoon

I’ve just fixed my third puncture in the last 10 months …. on the turbo trainer. I’d like to claim that it is due to the incredible power I generate such that it’s more a surprise that the drive chain of the bike can stand up to it – but that would fool nobody.

The punctures have all been due to failures along inner-tube seams but it’s still a bit confusing as to how that happens – is the heat generated a factor?

Anyway, the 9 sessions (10 hours) in the last two weeks have gone well although I have no empirical measures as the turbo is very rudimentary. The sessions now include three 9 minute ‘intervals’ of increasing speed so they should be doing some good. I plan to get an old-style bike computer and fit it to the rear wheel so I can at least measure speed and distance to make sure I’m not fooling myself that I’m putting in proper effort.

Still no rides outside but there are signs of improvement in the weather so I may not be able to put it off too much longer.

Plans are forming for the ride out to the alps in the summer. Looks like a ferry from Portsmouth to Caen – leaving late evening and arriving just before 7am. That should give me a full day’s cycling that day.

The aim will be to do the trip – just over 500 miles (800 km) in 3 days but I have no idea whether that’s realistic. Is three days, each with 10 hours of riding at an average of 27km (nearly 17mph), possible for me?

The furthest I’ve been in a day is 282 km (176 miles) when I ‘everested’ last summer but that was all up or down so isn’t necessarily representative.