The Grand Boucle celebrates its 100th running in
2013. It was first run on 1903, but breaks for the two world wars mean that it
has had to wait until this year for its 100th race. One year it goes
round the country in an anticlockwise direction and the other year in a clockwise
direction. I cant figure out whether it’s clockwise or not this year. It kinda
starts off clockwise starting in Corsica at 6 on the clock and makes its way up
to 12, at Mont Saint Michel then back to 6 at Ventoux, as clocks are apt to do.
But then instead of turning right to head back up to 12 in a clockwise
direction it turns left and goes anti-clockwise. Maybe in this most traditional
of tours there has been special dispensation to fly in the face of tradition.
I’m all for some traditional face flying personally, it spices things up a bit I
always find. However, we must be wary of the risk that when we get to the bottom
of France autopilot takes over and we turn right instead of left. Need to be
ever watchful for that one, taking a wrong turn at that point in proceedings
would be almost too much to take.
In the run up to the tour I was always fearful of getting
injured. That something disastrous would happen which would mean that
completing the tour would be impossible. What I had not really thought about
was the attritional nature of the task that is in front of us. Legs are
beginning to feel tight, backs are painful, hands are blistered and arses are
chaffed.
As unpleasant as it might seem arses are perhaps the cause
of the most discomfort. The first 20 minutes of a ride are uncomfortable and
getting Jimmy and the Twins to stop complaining takes a bit of time.
The organisation that goes into the Tour has been
incredible. We only see a part of it, I’m sure, but we have everything, and
more that we need. That includes the provision of medical, physio and massage
support.
I had never had a proper massage before, and I’m not sure
that I want one again. I went in thinking I was a super strong athlete and came
out a broken man, whilst suffering physical pain in the interim.
Once I was on the couch I was pounded to within an inch of
my life, before being told that my body was so out of kilter that it is a
surprise that I was able to cycle at all. Apparently I am somewhat of a miracle
and not in a good way. Evidently, the right side my body is significantly
larger than my left. To such an extent that it’s a wonder that I don’t spend
the whole time cycling in circles. At first I received this news with delight.
The velodrome was immediately brought to mind, you cycle in circles in that,
after all. Perhaps my physical ineptitudes could infact be the perfect
adaptation for the ‘drome. Alas, it is my right side that is significantly
larger and therefore my natural bias will be all wrong. Flying in the face of
tradition is one thing, but cycling the wrong way round a velodrome might be
frowned upon by the cycling cognoscenti.
I was also informed that I was to cease henceforth with hot
showers. From now on, I am to come in from a ride sit in a cold bath and then
have a cold shower. To stop the swelling in my non-uniform legs, apparently. Any
small pleasure that I had taken from a long hot shower after a equally long hot
day on the bike has now been removed.
I have also been given a tennis ball that every night I am
to run up and down the outside of my thighs and across my calfs. I had been
under the false pretence that my legs had been in the rudest of health. Strong,
lean, fit and above all painless – or so I thought. However, one revolution of
the tennis ball up my IT Band (physio speak for the outside of my thigh),
disabused me of that notion. My legs are infact wrecked, the yelps of pain
elicited by the tennis ball bear testament to that.
I had never thought of a tennis ball as an implement of
torture, before. But my impressions have soon changed. See if the pope had a
cupboard full of tennis balls and knowledge of where the IT Band was situated,
during the Spanish inquisition? Well all I am saying it that Galileo would be
swearing blind that the Earth was flat and the sun orbited the moon.
Alas the massagers haven’t been able to do anything about my
raw undercarriage. It's not that kind of massage therapy, apparently. So forgive
me if I cut this short. If the thighs will take the strain, I’m off to dangle Jimmy
and the Twins in a cup of iced water* in the hope that will persuade them to
shut the **** up and stop complaining.
From somewhere in deepest France,
N
*A very large cup. Possibly
even a bowl, infact might need to crouch over the bath.
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