The High5 New Year Competition Giveaway!

Everyone loves free stuff. Fact!

Because of this, and the fact that I’ve not sobered up from the mulled wine yet, I’ve decided to do a little prize giveaway.

The guys at High5 have kindly donated a ‘Race Pack’ which is a buddle of veritable nutritional treats!

It includes:

6x EnergyGel Plus, 2x EnergyGel, 1x IsoGel Plus, 2x IsoGel, 4x EnergySource, 1x EnergySource X’treme, 1x Protein Recovery, 2x ZERO sachet, 1x 750ml Bottle, Nutrition Guide for Sportive, Triathlon, MTB.

That should keep you going for a while!

All you have to do to enter the competition is answer this simple question:

'Since I started winter training on the 1^st of October, how many training hours have I accumulated on the bike this winter?'

High5 products in action this year at the National Time Trial.

The winner will be the person closest to the correct answer in whole hours, and the closing date is midnight on Sunday 12^th of January. Please email your answers to DougMDeweyTrainSharp@gmail.com and include your name and address so the High5 elves can post you the goodies!!

My tip is - it’s less than you think.... Oh no it isn’t… Ohhhh yes it is!! (Sorry, it’s still panto season in my head).

Bonne chance à tous!

WHAMmy

Cycling?
Yawn.


Christmas?
YES!

Step 1: Put this song on   

Step 2: Eat some ambiguous mince 'meat' pies.

Step 3: Embrace the joyyyyyy!!

Merry Christmas from the Dewey/Dawson household!!

Christmas and what maaaate?

It’s like riding a bike

Cycling up a mountain is a lot like having sex: If you start too fast or hard you’re going to explode before you reach the end, and you’re going to end up spent and embarrassed.

The scenery was orgasmic

Climbing the volcano Teide on my long ride I’d say I was ‘finished’ around 15km in, or more importantly 25km from the top. The legs felt good, I was mulling over the week’s training and feeling pleased. Endorphins were flooding my brain to an ecstasy inducing level; basically what every athlete lives for. Then boom!

Imagine you’re getting it on with the woman of your dreams whilst driving 150kph in your classic Porsche to your chateau. Suddenly she slams on the brakes and boots you out.

Now you’re standing in a street, in Hull, naked.

Doing some responsible rock jumping 

I was slipping down the waterslide of energy levels into the whirlpool of glycogen debt (I stayed next door to a waterpark, can you tell?) I was out of food, and water, and the next café was apparently 12km further up (It turns out it was in fact 15km. I was counting!!) At this point I genuinely thought I was going to have to thumb a lift off a random tourist, but some kind of pigheadedness kept me moving forward. The hour between 4:45 and 5:45 is one of the darkest I’ve had for a while.

I finally dragged my sorry behind into the café and frittered all of my nine euros on life’s essentials: coffee, coke and three sugary cakes. Utter bliss. Then I got back on my bike and rode the final 8km full gas! Just kidding, I grovelled my way up the rest of the climb. Once across the plateau I went down the 43km descent the fastest I ever have and I’d credit this mostly to the fact that I didn’t brake. Braking is a waste of energy; energy which I didn’t have!

Bicep time

I arrived back at the apartment feeling like Billy-big-balls having done 182km in 7 hours and 17 minutes, and I'm sure that the chain-smoking, overweight, alcohol-swilling Brits there were toasting my achievement with lambrini out of plastic disposable cups.

A man walks down the hill...

In the gutter. He has no shirt, only shorts and a pair of tattered trainers.

His skin is lined and battered, scorched by years under a relentless sun. He wears a vague, wistful look and his eyes focus just further than the middle distance.

His loping gait speaks volumes of the many miles he has trodden.

His arms are gaunt cables of muscle which have sagged and stretched. His cheeks are hollowed and sallow.

Across his back are tattooed the words: 'Stoke City F.C.'

Welcome to Tenerife!

Chez Wiggo: at the top of Teide, the plateau of which Neil Armstrong described as the place most similar to the moon landscape he had ever been.

It feels like both a lot and very little happened in Tenerife.

A lot of hours were done on the bike, and I say hours rather than kilometres because looking at average speeds the distance covered means nothing! What felt like copious amounts of time was spent washing kit in the sink, which is not easy. I imagine pre washing machine house-wives had forearms of steel!

Not a lot of time was spent choosing food: we went for the tuna/eggs with rice/pasta option day-in, day-out. I do admit to having several pizzas (just to liven things up a bit) as a pre-dinner snack though.

A lot of time on the bike was spent being either too hot (when climbing, sweating out my eyeballs) or too cold (when descending, clinging on for grim death on that never-ending hairpin bend). It keeps you on your toes that’s for sure!

Although seemingly every ride turned into an out-and-out epic, one day in particular will endure the longest in my memory. On the final Saturday, the day that Sam flew back, I decided to try and do a loop over to the North-West coast and then come back over El Teide. And… 

I’ll tell you about it next time!