On any given day, I could be accompanied by five riders who have won National Championships. Riding at the back of the group, (not scrubbing), you can almost smell the experience. Our little privileged group breezes through towns and villages like Hell's Angels, thighs pumping and calves flexing, scaring the elderly and inspiring the children to wreak havoc in their chosen field. So for those four hours at a time, I can just become a sponge and soak up everything. Well, I say four hours, I really mean two and half-ish. For the last ninety minutes I don't do very much talking. They make remarks and I nod and grunt accordingly, whilst glancing back to check my brakes aren't rubbing, or they're aren't three other incredibly lean riders hanging from my now vacant rear end of the saddle. I now know how Geraint Thomas felt having to be hoisted from his bike in last year's Tour de France. That's me every time I get home. I wander aimlessly through the back door and throw myself down on anything that looks relatively able to hold 82 kilos of tiredness. After amassing all my available strength and willpower to remove my overshoes, I head up the wooden hill to the shower, the little slice of heaven after a training session. There will come a day in the not too distant future where I will suffer a hiding so humongously extraordinarily large that I will shower in my overshoes. Something amazing happens in my shower. My shower brings forth the perfect setting to re-enact the scenes from the film Phone Booth. And I am Colin Farrell. The warm shower becomes an extremely cozy phone booth. Mam plays an Oscar winning role as Forest Whitaker. In the film Whitaker tries to coax Farrell out of the booth under the suspicion of that he's shot someone. Mam tries to coax me out because I'm enjoying the warmth too much, and the shower is now leaking into the sitting room.
Having been off since the start of December, thanks to the kind obliging folks at Waterford IT, and not being back for another week, I've still got a bit of holiday training time left. I reckon I'll go through withdrawal symptoms once I go back after 6 weeks off. I might not go back. Yeah that's a good bet actually.
That's it for this blog, but before I sign off let me tell you about something that happened when I went to take my driver theory test. I had 40 questions to answer with the minimum passing mark being 35/40. I went in to confirm or deny my details. The woman asked me my name. I gave her my name, paying careful attention to the difficult pronunciation of my second name. Question 1 down. She asked me my address. I answered, even throwing in "County" before the word "Tipperary" for the full marks. And when she asked me my date of birth? Well I gave that question what for. She kept racking them up and I just kept knocking them out of the park. And then she asked what license I was applying for. And my brain knew there was a type of license, coded by a letter. A letter I didn't know. I thought back to the theory questions. I remember seeing an "M" and a "W". Was I an "M" or a "W"? Or was I an "A"? I wouldn't mind getting an "A" for once. In the end I settled for the phrase that will be forever imprinted on my brain "Car Vehicle". The first 5 minutes of the test were spent contemplating what must that woman think of me? "Car ... Vehicle ... She's probably gonna fail me for that even if I do pass my test. How could she pass somebody who doesn't know what license he wants?" In the end this was not the case. A great sense of shame was felt when she handed me over the piece of paper, I could feel her eyes burying themselves into the back of my head as I walked out the door. I reckon she and her coffee drinking friend had a right good laugh at my expense when I closed the door.
I'll be easy to spot in a car. I'll be the one blocking out the light through the driver side window, clipping kerbs, taking the racing line through town and villages in the search for marginal gains, but giving extra clearance to cyclists.
Ciao,
Hahessy.
