Getting high

In just over two weeks and I'll be standing with my lovely Sidi shoes(in my hand) dipping my feet and the back wheel of my Cervelo in the Atlantic Ocean before starting on one of the epic cycle challenges in Europe, The Raid Pyrenean.
To get to the point where I still feel I'm not ready with only a short amount of time left stikes fear into my slowly beating heart.

On every ride I've become a hill addict, I dont count my rides in distance travelled it's in meters gained vertically that count. The longer and steeper the better, and there in lies the problem. Kent isn't the Pyrenees, or the Alps to be fair to it, it's not even the Dales or Pennines. It's the garden of England and yes on every ride you are blessed with the sights, smells and sounds of our beautiful country there aren't many climbs that go over 300 meters.

Last week I started out on a usual ride, 100 -120 km, when after 20km I realised I'd only gone up 97 metres, panic set in. Diving off to my right I battled up the 22% of Sundridge Hill, feeling better I looked at the height gained on my very clever bike computer - 213m - it flashed. What, how can this be, my eyeballs were bleeding with the effort of trying to get up it. I snarled at the computer - right that's what youre going to be like then is it - short changed by a computer, I'll show you! Left at the top left again and down the parallel hill, eyes watering at the speed of the descent, flies splattering against my face and legs. Left at the bottom and back up again. Ha easy I hissed through my white lips, looking down the computer soulessly flashed 329m. I was heartbroken, it was going to be along day.
A few hours later I sat on my home computer and did a flythrough of my route on google earth, the Downs sure looked like the Alps on the 3d effect.
I huffed and puffed and stressed as I read even more of the "Great Road Climbs of the Pyrenees" I must ask Graeme Fife to do a "Great Road Climbs of Kent". Even more stressed that I wasn't getting high often enough I started going through "100 Climbs" a new pocket sized book.
Oh and Ah! This was it, the secret to soaring like an eagle. I found a few climbs near enough to home and close enough together to get excited.
My first foray into a few unknown hills was interesting, 80km and 1700m height gained - yes I did some twice but oh boy, the next day, inspite of the best efforts of Simon Lamb's oils, my legs were stiffer than they had ever been, the muscles of my backside screamed as I thought about stairs. So time to do it again, and again.

Even my commute to work has three times the climbing it used to 758m in 45km!

By the end of the week I was so tired that I decided to give up drinking wine at home all together. I have spent most evenings cleaning red wine from my carpet having fallen asleep from exhaustion and dropping my half full (notice the positivity) glass all over me.

Am I ready? No, not at all. What will happen in the Pyrenees, I'll get excited by riding in agroup, go off to fast in a show of macho bike riding, blow up after about 50km and get blow out the back on the first climb and suffer the indignity of having the whole group wait for me at the bar at closing time.

But I make this vow to you now, that I will not get off or push or stop on any mountain climbs in the Pyrenees*.

* I will have to take pictures at some point but I won't do it going uphill I promise.

http://www.justgiving.com/cyclingdisorder