MONDAY 28th April - 10 weeks to go

Miles last week 61 (61 road, 0 indoors)
Weight : 14st 9.0lbs (-2.0 lbs)
Body fat : 25.2% (-0.4%)
Tantia body type 2 (obese)

Weight details a couple of days late this week as following a severe case of lack of confidence, I booked five days in Mallorca at the Stephen Roche cycling camp to try out a few hills and I´ve not got my faithful Tantia scales with me.

Having had two days here now, its a case of good news and bad news: good news is that I am undoubtedly much stronger, lighter and fitter than the last time I was here (see photo at start of blog with Mr Roche himself to see what I mean), bad news is that the hills are still hard going and they are 2-3 miles in length and average 5% gradient... long way off 15 miles at average 7.5%. So, feeling a bit concerned.

However, the good news is that less worried about Tour of Ireland next week - yesterday did 65 miles over three hills averaging over 16.5 mph and felt fine. Taking a whole day to do twice that is not so daunting - mainly down to the enormous effect of cycling in a group, makes it much, much easier.

Other thing I have been practicing here is going down hill around hairpin bends... finding it very scary, particularly in a group with people all around you. I know the theory, break before the bend NOT on it, and let the bike take you around. However, its a bit like the first time I learnt to ski, I knew that in theory in the middle of a turn as you were facing straight down hill the skis would take you around to the safety of the next traverse, however, all my instincts contradict this. So, now not only am I worried about going up the Tourmalet, I´m also worried about coming down it!

Mallorca is a tremendous place for cycling, government really encourage cyclists from keeping the tarmac up to scratch to telling the locals to show some courtesy when driving past (got to say the latter is of only limited success!)