Sunday January 18th 2009

This week I was prompted to put together the Guildford Peloton Club Calendar. This list, which is below, is a list of events that members (used loosely) will be looking to do together with a list of other events that may or may not occur. I myself will be doing some of these plus maybe if Team MK are up for it, the odd Audax.

Despite some brave talk about actually forming a club rather than being a stylish group of cyclist who email each other daily with brave and courageous intentions, meet up occasionally for a ride, letch over each others bikes, and have even been known to get together to go to the cinema in Leicester Square (the Guilford Peloton trip to see The Flying Scotsman, a film about Graham Obree, followed by a gourmet burger), nothing ever came of it. There has even been talk about setting up a Guildford Peloton website but these ideas came to grief when a rebellious and more recent section of the members wanted to change the name to the Picon Peloton.

Guildford Peloton Club Calendar

February TBA Box Hill Time Time Trial Leg 1
March 1st Puncehur Sportive near Brighton
March 8th 2009 SWRC 100
March TBA Box Hill Time Time Trial Leg 2
April TBA Box Hill Time Time Trial Leg 3
May 10th 2009 Hampshire Hilly Hundred
May 17th 2009 Etap Caledonia -
May 21st-25th 2009 Etap Reccie - Mont Ventoux
May 31st 2009 Chiltern 100
June TBA Box Hill Time Time Trial Leg 4
June 14th 2009 Dragon Ride -
July 4th 2009 Marmotte
July 20th 2009 Etap du Tour
July/ Aug TBA Family BBQ and Fun Day - (Venue top of Box Hill)
July/Aug/Sept TBA Club Championship - tba (Venue Guilford Velodrome)
July/Aug/Sept TBA Club AGM - (Venue Provisionally - National trust Tea Shop Box Hill)
September TBA Surrey Legs of Steel
Oct/Nov TBA Club Dinner & Dance
October 18th 2009 Gran Fondo Giro de Lombardia -

After last weeks Watership Down Audax in Winchester I had a headache until well into Monday afternoon. Suggestions that it may be dehydration are probably partially right, but some of the cause might be stress around the current demise of my employers HBOS. Either way the headache has now gone away.

Training was sparse this week with just an hour and a half on Wednesday in the garage on the turbo, followed by the usual striptease in front of the washing machine (The Wife won’t let me in the house dripping of sweat) and the naked dash of shame to the shower. I still haven’t set up the TACX IMagic so I am still using my circa 1990 rusty turbo.

Thursday my son had a rugby match (tag rugby). Year 4 was all called to the gym to get instructions at morning break. My son was told that he had been promoted to the A Team which pleased him, and he was even more pleased when they won 8-6.

Saturday I had to take my son to football. His team was missing their best player so it was a real psychological game. Would the team still be good without their best man? If they won it would be a real boost for the team. In the end they lost 3-2 but it was a good game not helped by the second best player getting a blister from his new boots and being out the game whist I rummaged through a dustbin full of smelly old football boots to try to find him another pair that he could use that fitted him better. Once he had the second pair of boots he was back on the pitch.

Saturday afternoon The Wife had me back out in the garden clearing up where the trellis had been removed over Christmas. It was a lovely day for gardening but jolly hard work moving bushes and flowerbeds and filling 15 bags with soil and carting it down the dump.

Sunday was my first ride since the previous Sunday. 8:15 AM I cycled over to Surbiton to meet M and together we cycled down through Esher and Cobham to Shere. The Peloton were meeting in Shere at 10:00 AM and we arrived about 2 minutes late to find everyone waiting. A number live in London and had taken the 9:12 train to Guildford from Waterloo rather than cycle down as M and I had. No time for a coffee in the Lucky Duck! There were seven of us and we cycled north up the hill and along the ridge, down Ranmore Common into Dorking then up Box Hill. There we stopped for refreshment (they had lovely Coffee and Walnut sponge cake; I had to have a piece to top up my fuel reserves). This was followed by an 8 mile circuit at speed around Box Hill and then we all parted at Rykers Café before M and I went back up Box Hill and home (the others headed back to Guilford).

We managed just over 55 miles on the Sunday morning ride. One of the guys had a camera and has posted the pictures on the web. Try the attached link.

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/cmoar1/PiconPelotonDoGuildfordDorkingColDuBoxOnAWintryMorning?feat=directlink#

I got home and The Wife advised me she had been clearing up the garden and had another car load to go to the dump. I had to advise her that the dump closes at 13:00 on Sundays in the winter so that wasn’t possible. It wasn't received well as you can imagine, especially as her mother and sister will be coming over from Ireland for a long weekend this week and the house has to be pristine. A pile of bags of soil and rubbish still sitting on the patio awaiting transportation to the dump when they arrive is just not acceptable. In the end we ended up going to Kingston shopping (son needed a new mouth guard for rugby) followed by church.