Sarahmade

It is building up to be the most exciting weekend ever. The Tour de France is coming to London. We have been on a competition frenzy to win VIP hospitality/back stage passes. Sunday is secure. You will find us in the official TdF departure village from 7.15am. We are just waiting for a competition win for Saturday.

Hopefully everyone has heard about it by now. Even a someone in a tiny newsagent explained the lack of Cycling Weekly magazine as being due to ‘that French thing’.

Number one need is the Ridgeback World Panorama

Number two is the Jopo

I’m not quite sure how I am going to get them but I do have someone working on the first.

Tom and I went out for a lovely meal last night. We went on our bikes and Tom treated me to detailed explanation of all the other cyclists bike lights and if they were illegal or not, and how much they go for on ebay and in the shops. He has become a bike light geek. Two weeks ago he was a cycle helmet geek. It reminds me of some of my family who talk about the amount of teeth on chain sets and what gear someone is in as they cycle by at 25mph. Tom hasn’t quite reached that stage yet.

It’s Tour de France time. Time for lots of images of farm animals with bikes in the background. If you have the joy of Eurosport or ITV2 you can watch it, otherwise you can watch it at 1.30am on ITV1. If you are like my mum and dad you will go to Paris and see it in the flesh.

Tom Smith highlighted an interesting problem with my sticker plan. We were talking about the possibility of stalkers from blogs, and how it is probably important not to give out too much personal information – like for example “I am taking part in the Stratford triathlon and my start time is 10.44.45″ – so he was saying that marking the miles from my house may lead people to work out where my house is, if they find the stickers then draw circles on maps etc. I may have to put some rogue stickers around to confuse people, maybe even colour coded so that only those I know won’t stalk me can know the real miles.

I completed a triathlon yesterday. It was exactly as I visualised. My friend Sarah started 45secs before me, I caught her in the swim and overtook her in transition, beat her by about 4mins in the cycle. Then she just overtook me in the run and I think beat me, but we don’t know yet becuase the results haven’t been published. It was like a film in my head, Sarah crossed the line then the clock counted down 45 seconds in slow motion, cut to me running in slow motion trying to reach the line. It was all a cruel joke though because I really was running in slow motion and I just couldn’t make that sprint finish to cross the line with 1 second to go. hmmm we’ll see when the results are published.

I think my friend Kate was traumatised, because when both Sarah and I crossed her path on the run circuit she would shout things like “THIS IS HELL” and “I’M IN SO MUCH PAIN”. ooohps I think she forgot it was supposed to be fun.

I ran in Brighton this morning, 7.45am, pier to pier to pier and more, and I got so excited because I saw the sea swimmers! There were about 15 of them – they are so cool.