<<Registration day How the Pro’s do it >>

Well the day had finally arrived and it was time to do the Etape.
We got up at 4.30 and made some porridge then at 5am headed to Montelimar.  We began to pass people cycling in from about 6 miles out.  It was still pitch black and they weren’t [...]

With the Etape on the Monday we decided to register on Saturday to avoid having to do any travel on the Sunday.
Arriving at the registration village felt quite special, it was good to be a part of this event rather than a watcher.

We headed along for a registration and were pleasantly surprised with the rucksack [...]

I ended up crashing at my parents house in Glasgow last night due to car disasters.  I had the bike with me so decided to cycle home much to the surprise of my mum.
It turned out to be a nice morning and with the pressure of being home in time for work it meant I [...]

That is the end of my seven week base program.  So 33 hours on the turbo and 804km.
After the rest week in week 4 I redid the fitness test as I felt things were getting too easy.  This upped my power figures by about 30% (not a lot when the number is small to begin [...]

Training is now going to start over again.  I have just had  surgery today on both knees to fix the cartilage.  I am hoping to be able to get on the trainer as soon as possible but have been told it will likely be 3 weeks.
Hopefully my good base will now pay off and I [...]

I have only done a couple of Sportives so far but this one was definately the most fun.
I had headed over to Islay, an island off the west coast of Scotland, for my summer holiday and this event happened to be on at the time. 100 miles around Islay. It took a few [...]

As I nervously waited at the start line of the Southern Uplands Sportive I was already beginning to wonder if I had bitten off more than I could chew. The whole field of only 250 people was full of people wearing various club jerseys. I was in the last group to go off [...]

I have now started to realise that cyling a long distance requires more than a bottle of water. After some more web research and trawling forums I have decided to give the Science in Sport (SiS) energy products a try.
Very basically from what I can work out after cycling for more than 2 hours [...]

So what the hell am I doing! 
It would appear that over a few beers at Christmas I volunteered to take part in L’Etape du Tour with Roy, one of my friends.  I don’t remember actually volunteering to really do it but is wife told me I had so there was no way out.  As you will discover Roy [...]