The Training Diary

Weekend of the 28-29th April saw Team Human Science at the gates to the park at 8.30. Bright eyed and bushy tailed, they were off on another team ride. The route took them from Teddington, through Esher and Cobham, down to Guildford. From there they swung south through Godalming and joined up with the Surrey Cycle Route number 22... delightful!

I'm afraid that after that I stopped paying attention to the route that we were following, sat back and enjoyed the ride! Tom did a fantastic job of being route master with a combination of magazine pages, AA route finder print outs and the mighty i-phone; he is comfortably in second place in the team rankings for navigator chief with Dr Glaister still holding on to pole position with his own internal "google earth" stored somewhere inside his mighty brain. Jon and I are trailing, still struggling to remember the two next turns or place names on the route - forget the fact that we are supposed to be able to store 7 +/- 2 pieces of information in our short term memory at any given time.

Lunch time found us in Hampshire and we noshed happily on a delightful ham sandwich at the Golden Pot (www.goldenpot.org) Just as we were about to get up and leave - the heavens opened, so we sat back down, enjoyed some more banter and discussed the Rockies, tasted the fear, all fell silent and then fortunately the rain stopped again and we headed back out on the road.

The afternoon saw a couple of showers here and there but nothing that didn't dry out soon enough. On the homeward stretch Tom was cursed with three (yes, 3) punctures and used up all of the team's spare inner-tubes. By now it was starting to get dark and there was a swift discussion over whether to turn back to Guildford and try and get a train back or to hoof it back to Hampton Court and hope that the fact that we only had one front light between us would not cause us too much damage. Democratic decision (possibly lead by me...) saw us cranking the gears and pedalling hard for home.  We arrived back just as it really was getting dangerous and while the boys all dashed in and out of their respective abodes, and off to the movies to watch The Damned United, I ran a bath, drank banana smoothies and went to bed nice and early! Wild child that I am...

All in all a successful day out for Team Human Science! Next week will see us head up north, way up north to the Highlands of Scotland to start our journey from John O'Groats to Lands End.