I'm fairly certain at this point that I haven't trained enough. We received the route details a couple of weeks ago, and the amount of climbing is immense. The hardest day (day 3, Monday 15th June) will see us cycling 130 miles, and doing the equivalent of cycling up and down Snowdon 3 times. The next day is the same distance, but "only" up and down Snowdon 2½ times. My training has been mainly in the Thames valley, and while I've been hitting the available hills, over 100 miles I struggle to fit a single Snowdon equivalent in (I've decided that "a Snowdon" is now a viable unit of vertical measurement).
The bike gets packed off on Sunday, and I've going through the kit-lists and doing some last minute orders. The provisional weather forecasts are out for Scotland, and currently they are favouring "chilly and wet", though I'll take more notice middle of next week, when predictions will become a little more accurate. I fly out Friday morning from Southampton (with a stop-over in Edinburgh before heading onto Wick), and should arrive in John O'Groats mid-afternoon.
I did my last race on Sunday...an Olympic Triathlon over in Norfolk. Predictably my swim and run were sub-par (29 minutes and 47 minutes respectively, bringing me in mid-field), with the bike leg dragging me up to a semi-respectable 54th overall out of 200. I clocked an average speed of 22.5mph on the bike over 25 miles, though the course was fairly flat. My next race is at the end of June,l and it's a sprint distance...once JOGLE is out of the way I intend to do some work on the running, which is pretty pants right now. I reckon there is 6 minutes to gain in the run, and a minute on the swim.
While I'm cycling down the country I won't have access to a PC, so will be attmepting to run updates from my phone. A group of the more geeky of us are on Twitter, and will be using the tag #RAB10 . There will also be personalised oens based on our numbers, so I will also be using #RAB10-208. Expect photos, whining about sore legs/bum/feet, and if I'm particularly cunning video (though don't expect it to be exciting!)
I'll be back in the land of the living on the evening of Monday 21st June...hopefully. So long as I don't die or something silly like that...