Handbags at Noon.

Monday June 17th

Eeeeek! A 5lb weight gain. Two days of zero exercise and meals at the pub have taken their toll.
Luckily my 82 mile bike ride with Clarky has offset that a bit.
Both on our TT bikes we could tramp on a fair bit whilst replicating race conditions that little bit more than on our roadies. Still had to stop at Epworth cafe for water replenishments and a tuna bun. Earlier on in the ride some 'Dick' in a big lorry ignored the little fellas and started to pull out infront of us. Some friendly gesturing still failed to catch his attention as he refused to look our way. Maybe he genuinely hadn't seen us? Oh yes he had! This was obvious when he accelerated past us giving us no more than a couple of inches clearance. Frightening when you're on your tribars! I still can't get my head around this mentality. Yes, I realise cyclists along with roller skaters and shopping trolley pushers feature very low down in the transport food chain and I also know the lycra attire with gay safety helmet isn't the most intimidating of get-ups. But to deliberately hold your line in an Artic so as to squeeze you into the gutter gets my goat! Big bully syndrome!
It's such a shame a good training ride (22.3 mph avg) for me has been remembered for the wrong reasons. I would normally have mentioned Strava segments/ KOMs, continuous through & offing and 22.3mph averages, (oh, I've already mentioned that) but, that is,.... for what happened next…...
Only a mile from home another incident almost left me rolling around in the dust with some chav. A lass in an oncoming car suddenly decided to pull right across my path and onto the grass verge bringing me to a halt. I then rode past shrugging my shoulders in disgust asking her what she was doing?
Jeeez!!! I almost fell off my bike as out of nowhere some facially tatooed youth straight from the set of 'Skint' started hurling abuse in my general direction. For some reason he was hell bent on, (and to quote him), ….. 'Ripping my head off!'.
It'd suddenly dawned on me, that Dangerous Daisy was pulling over to see her boyfriend who was now yomping down the middle of the road in hot pursuit. He obviously wasn't taking kindly to my gesturing at her inconsiderate driving.
I thought of doing the sensible thing and giving him my favourite 5 knuckle shuffle salute and then riding away at pace but curiousity got the better of me.
I stopped, unclipped, tore of my bike shoes and chucked my helmet and shades in the verge. I walked back, (in my socks) to confront him to see what his problem was and to why I was the reason for his veins popping out of his neck? Eyeball to eyball his shouts became softer and ranting slowly ebbed, it turns out he wasn't so eager to rip my head off as he first thought, Now make up your mind?. After a minute or two the brave Knight returned to his damsel, I hope, to give her a rollicking for her crap driving.

As soon as I got home it was trainers on for a 3 mile run at 7 min pace around the block. Always looking behind me I might add, in case I was being followed.