Swansong#

Thu, 16 Mar 2006 12:00:00 +0000

So when I woke up I realised that I didn't actually hurt - or at least, not more than I had any other day this week, and in the absence of any medical advice not to (perhaps the doctor thought I wasn't stupid enough to consider it) I might as well get out and skate a bit. Today was the all-day tour to Stintino - the minibus was scheduled to meet us at lunchtime with our bags and picnics.

Got up, carefully ate some breakfast (scrambled eggs are soft, and experimentation shows that in fact most things are OK if I only bite them on the left side), wandered around a bit, put skates on and essayed a couple of loops of the hotel driveway. OK, that's easy. Looked around for my group, who were nowhere to be seen. Oops. Found Merten, who would usually have been in it but had dropped to another group for the day. He thought it had left already. Right. Hmm. Bet I can catch them up, though - off we go. There's a paceline, they're not moving too fast, I can catch them on the uphill.

As I draw nearer, I see there are three LSST skinsuits in the line. Ah. But Merten and I are the only LSST members in our group, so this must be <fx: scary organ music> the fast group. Oh well. I managed to catch them (I expect they were just taking it easy while they warmed up, but still) and I'm here now, let's see how we go.

Important lessons learnt

• We go quite a lot faster. But that's OK. That's the point.
• Our cadence is quite a lot slower. I can mostly match it. There's one guy who I can match either the cadence or the speed, but not both at once unless I stay well within the personal space of the person in front - every time he speeds up a bit, I feel like I'm treading water furiously until I make up the ground again. I'm still finding that some people are much easier to follow than others, and although in the main they're people I know they're not necessarily people I've ever drafted before, so it's not just a matter of familiarity.
• This one is really important: don't bother trying to overtake the slightly slower bunch at the top of a hill in the hope of catching the fast one halfway down - (a) you don't have a hope of catching the faster line even if you skate all the way down instead of gliding, (b) the slower line will also come past you thirty seconds later like some kind of train and you won't catch them either until the next rest stop a very very long time (it felt longer) later.
• But basically, I can more or less manage for most of it. I was dropped quite comprehensively on the last km or two, though.

The minibus met us at lunchtime with food; a full-sized bus met us at Stintino to take us back to the hotel (although it transpired that it was a very ill bus and a replacement had to be sent out for that purpose), and after lots and lots of photos we eventually clambered aboard for the trip back to dinner.

Last day. Boo. Hiss. Have to wait another eight months minimum before I can do any of that again.