What scares us the most?


Even though we're no longer spring chickens, we're quietly confident that, physically, we're up for this challenge, i.e that we CAN cycle an average of 90 miles per day for 11 days.

We're confident that, with all our training and conditioning between now and April 18th, we will be in sufficiently good shape.

What are the most likely things to stop us achieving our goal? Here are the big two:

  1. Repetitive strain injury (RSI). It's unlikely that we'll cycle more than one or two back-to-back 90 mile days as part of our training. Which means that we just won't know in advance what might issues might niggle our bodies us after 3 or more days consecutive 90 mile days in the saddle. The challenge with RSIs is that they're very hard to treat or mask with pain killers.

    Some years ago, on a long mountain bike ride of 100km in one day, I suffered from iliotibial band syndrome, more commonly know as "IT band syndrome". It's quite common amongst cyclists, and  typically caused by poor posture or motion, perhaps induced by the saddle height and/or angle being set incorrectly.

    For me, it manifested itself as a sharp pain on the outside of my left knee. This pain took a week or so to go away. If I'd been required to cycle another 100km (or even 20km) the day after, I think this would have been impossible, i.e. too painful.

    So when I started gravel bike training for LEJOG, I was more than a bit paranoid that IT band syndrome would strike again. But mercifully, it hasn't. Excellent! If it does on LEJOG, it could be an absolute showstopper for me.

  2. A significant crash. Although of course crashes can happen at any time for a myriad of reasons, we're actutely aware that, towards the end of each day, we're going to be seriously fatigued, mentally and physically. If we're not paying attention, it'lll be all too easy to hit a kerb, or each other, or a bad pothole, etc. If muscles or tendons or bones are severely impacted, it could be game over.

    Even if we're physically ok after a major crash, our bikes might not be. Hopefully we'll carry enough in the way of spare parts to fix things up rapidly, or be able to kick in the door of a local bike shop and beg for their instant services! 😁

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