Throw those curtains wide, two days like this a year would drive me wild

One of the saddest sights – preparing to fix the puncture

A (very) small joke for those who do know their a**e from their Elbow.

There are just some days when it doesn’t go for you. Today was one of them.

Monday was fine with an hour (42.7km – 26.5 miles) on the turbo as a recovery ride from the 100km on Sunday. It was improved immeasurably by a re-run of competition 17 of the original Japanese ‘Ninja Warrior’ series where Makoto Nagano becomes only the second ultimate champion. That’s rather pathetic, I know, but anything to take my mind off the monotony of the turbo.

This morning dawned fairly mild and bright and I decided to go for a ride – bib shorts for the first time this year (but with leg warmers). The downside was that there was a 20 mph (32kph) wind blowing – but, hey, after the weather we’ve been having how much of a problem could that be?

I didn’t have a fixed idea about how far I’d go but I planned a loop heading south into the wind which gave me options to add more loops if it was going well – and which brought me home with the wind at my back. The bad news was that the route out took me over the very open Ridgeway.

I don’t know if the wind had strengthened, or I have weakened, but almost immediately I was working hard to maintain 15mph (24kph) on the flat. At one point going down a decent hill towards Lambourn – where I’d expect to be hitting 40mph (64kph) – I was actually pedalling and failing to reach 15mph (24kph).

Lambourn was the end of my first loop. With the noise of the wind I was struggling to hear cars behind me and, after one big twitch too many from the occasional sidewind, I decided to bail out.

I usually love my cycling but there are days when you have to remind yourself that it is ‘only’ cycling.

The return trip was better but I was pretty tired by then and to cap it all, I punctured less than 2.5 miles from home.

In all just 34 miles (54.8km) at only 15mph (24kph) with 1980 feet of climbing (604m) … and it felt so much harder,