A new bike and a Lance Wannabe.

This week saw another new addition to the family. Don't be silly, Ted the Yeti hasn't been relegated already!



It would seem that my enthusiasm for cycling is contagious. As some of you know, after seeing the health benefits that cycling has given me, my Mum has often joined me on a number of rides.  Then, after seeing how much I progressed with Ted, she decided that she too needed a nippier and lighter bike, so in a spur of the moment decision and after advice from Mikey she decided on a Trek 7.5.

The new bike arrived on Thursday.  As some of my previous posts have suggested, I'm not actually a "Trek fan" so I was surprised to find it is actually quite nice - a sleek black frame and thankfully, unlike Mikey's Trek CX bike, it doesn't scream its brand-name 14 times at you. After the clunky rigid mountain bike she is used to riding she is already enjoying zipping along merrily and yesterday joined me on a ride to Penzance to meet Mikey from work.

It was a nice ride, the sun was shining and amazingly the coast path wasn't as heavily populated with tourists and we happily whizzed along. After picking up Mikey on the harbour front we continued back the way we came. We reached Marazion and stopped to compose ourselves for the long steep hill out. I hate this hill! It starts off really steep and due to the heavy traffic on such a narrow road you can never get much momentum to get up it.

After making this first big climb we paused for a moment to catch our breath for the next stage - yet more climbing.  It isn’t quite as steep, but its still a big hill.... a very draggy one and with already tired legs from the first bit, it's a killer!  By now the first stretch has played havoc with your legs and every turn of the pedal is painful. We pootled onwards and up! I was leading with Michael at the back making sure that we were safe (what a gent) I suddenly caught sight of a rider to my right. Presuming it was Mikey I said "Hi". No response! I looked up and realised it wasn't my beloved, but a Lance-a-like in full US postal kit.

Without uttering a word he flew past me. How rude! I was enraged. I chased him down. It took me a few minutes to catch him, but then I hung to his wheel. He probably hadn't noticed me - as I'm sure if he had realised he would have put in more effort, but there was no way I wanted this "jumped up wannabe" to brag about how he dropped a 30something female and her mother. I got close to the top and decided to let him go, as I was exhausted and I also realised that I had left the others further down the hill. He probably hadn’t noticed me anyway. I was shattered and had practically no oxygen left in my body but I was exhilarated. I'm not normally competitive but it was great fun chasing someone down!