40 Goals

What a fine figure of a man. So this was taken about 5 miuntes ago, today on Monday. Its a mirror reflection, so that is my right leg not my left leg. As you can see things don't look too bad. A lot of bruising on my upper thigh, my ankle is still swollen but a lot of range in movement means I'm off out on my bike when I finish this post. Last Tuesday, the day of the crash, I looked around the internet to try and get some feeling for how serious my injuries were and how long I'd be off the bike. I didn't really find anything useful. Most of the pages were about sports induced injuries rather than from falling off a bike and largely they put the fear of god into me. Talk of 6 weeks here and season ending there made me quite miserable. So, here is a brief breakdown of the last six days and how I've gone from feeling really low and assuming La Marmotte was written off to today, 6 days later, where I'm wondering how hard I should go in the hills this afternoon! The ...

I crashed on Tuesday. I hurt myself quite badly. My rear derrailleur is knackered, the hanger is bent out of shape, my bar tape is ripped and my right brake lever is scuffed. My elbow, upper-hip/thigh and ankle are severely scraped and, now, heavily bruised. So, what the hell happenned? One of the great things about all the gadgetry I have is the ability to review and analyse the data afterwards and I must admit it has been fascinating. As fortune would have it, I descended this point at very high speed on Sunday, in glorious sunshine. So I have data to compare with my crash data. On Sunday I approached this bend at 47km/h and went round, freewheeling (and leaning hard) and as I went round my speed dropped to 39km/h without me applying the brakes. I can tell you now that I was right on it because the guy trying to keep up with me behind was (as I later discovered) a german domestic pro who, in his words, thought I had 'good speed!!' (with a thumbs up gesture). On Tuesday, the d...

Looking forward to testing my legs with some beautiful mountainous climbs, Col de Soller a mini Alpe d'Huez and Col de Calobra known as The Snake but the trip to Cap de Formentor (above) will be more a test of my fear of heights ... gulp.

Me and the missus are signed up for the BHF London 2 Paris ride in September. Should be fun riding with 'er indoors. Its a 3 day thing with a total of 280 miles. Its relatively flat and from what I gather relatively slow too. It should keep me on the straight and narrow post La Marmotte too. Should be a blast!