Men on bikes

Struggling up the nasty ascent out of Alfriston, there were three of us: Three middle-aged men travelling the South Downs Way on mountain bikes.

Monty and I were a little ahead when Tweeter, bringing up the rear, was severely displeased to be overtaken by ancient, hunch-backed hiker in shorts and wife-beater vest yomping up the hillside at quite a startling pace.

The grey-stubbled loony evidently stoppeth one in three for as he drew level with my hard-pedalling, hard-suffering friend he held him with his glittering eye and muttered succinctly "You know what your problem is? your saddle's too low, you need cleats on your shoes and you're in the wrong gear".

"So, did he say anything to you two?" Tweeter asked when he related the strange ecounter to us a few minutes later, lying in the sunshine on the iron age fort at the top of the Down (just a few metres above the Long Man of Wilmington, had we but known it )

Monty and I exchanged glances "Well yes - he said we looked... weary...  he said he felt ... weary". And just at that moment a shadow flashed across us and we looked up in the sky "A buzzard?" I asked "some bird that's bigger?"

We were on the South Downs Way, some 80 undulating miles of it. Well, "undulating" is one way of looking at it. "back-breakingly steep" would be another way. But another way again would "astonishingly beautiful"

Fifty miles of bridleway we covered on the first day, then B&B in a country pub where, oddly, we met a wedding party, then thirty more miles the next day until after the hair-raising descent into Eastbourne that concludes the path we cycled another 30 miles along the coast to Rye and home. 115 miles altogether, four punctures, five new inner-tubes, one hair-raising double brake failure and a trip home for one of us to fetch a replacement bike.

And just one crash: myself, on day two, painfully and irritatingly: no blood to show for it! What's the point of falling off your mountain bike onto the hard flinty downs but having no heroic trickle of dried blood from elbow to wrist? Oil-stained calves alone don't make you a real biker.


The sun went behind a cloud and, re-energised by the view, and our rest on the ramparts, we got back on our bikes and pedalled away; it wasn't long before we caught up with the old man again, he was barracking a hapless inner-city group of kids on Duke of Edinburgh who were carrying insufficient fresh water.

We ignored him and pedalled on, like one, that on a lonesome road doth walk in fear and dread, and having once turned round walks on, and turns no more his head; because he knows a frightful fiend doth close behind him tread

A Week in May

Twickenham, May 2010

Church St, Twickenham by Maxwell Hamilton

The last two weekends of May were dominated by rugby at the stadium: a weekend of Sevens, the Premiership Final and England v Barbarians combined to jam up the town for four whole days: an insouciant breach of the covenant of trust that the RFU owes its neighbours. Exacerbating the annoyance: on the last afternoon unfamiliar and uncertain traffic police were drafted in from North London and proved cluelessly bereft of common sense: despite the street being completely clear five mins after the kick off they refused to open the road; I phoned Control there and then and told them I was hemmed in by numpties. "There's no need to be rude to me Sir' said the closest numpty, mildly, "and I'm definitely not letting you through now."

The crowds reached 80,000 and some friends of ours who live on the main drag made thousands selling homemade cakes to the crowds from their front garden.

*****

Across the road from us lives Alice. She and her husband bought her house just before the war, new from the builder, for about £300. Just a short time later her husband volunteered, went off to fight and, missing in action, he never came home. She waited through four years of war and then another four years of peace before, losing hope, she declared him dead and she told me that because of the delay she never got the letter from the King that other war-widows received.

Alice never wanted to live on the Middlesex side of the river, but that was what they could afford and there she has stayed, alone but certainly not friendless, for seventy-two years. She is deaf and sleepless and now that the weather is warm and windows are open at night, her radio - talk, not music - wakes me up in small, still hours between 1 and 3; Sometimes it's loud enough for me to even make out the words.

I asked her about the rugby crowds and did they bother her? She said I shouldn't complain, sixty years ago the stadium held 100,000, and anyway it is all much better policed nowadays

*****

Every Sunday morning my mates and I go cycling. The bright warm early morning Sundays in May are the perfect-weather highlight of our year and those weeks we go further.   On the last Sunday in May we rode a sweeping circle, never more than ten miles from home, taking in two grand country houses (Syon and Osterley) several miles of the Grand Union Canal and the River Brent, as well as the London Air Parks in Hanworth where a Zeppelin landed in 1936, and the old Feltham Marshalling yards where steam trains once met and were divided and restacked.

A puncture and a canal-path diversion for a broken bridge delayed us and we were out for two hours; half a mile from home my friend Karl peeled off sprinting for the local church where his bell, and seven impatient bell ringers awaited him (when he got there they had gone).  His church are running a £14,000pa deficit (the vicar says on her blog) despite making lots of money out of the rugby crowds - car parking. The last two weekends in May - with four games! - were especially profitable.

*****

Our entrepreneurial friends on the road to the stadium had a fiftieth birthday and we were invited for drinks and smoked salmon with sour cream on blini (when I was young smoked salmon came on crustless triangles of buttered brown bread, when did that change?) . At the party was a slightly-well-known Twickenham based actor who is currently appearing in the West End. Tall, blond and striking, she dominated the small back room and the assembled company; Mrs Botogol and I affected not to recognise her, but other guests were fawning and politely praised her work; she beamed.  I dropped the name of an even more famous Twickenham-based actor - whom we know from school, and was rewarded by a momentary frown across her peach-perfect brow. I am a git.

Fetching another canapé from the kitchen I introduced myself to our hosts' next door neighbour, who was hovering shyly near the red wine. He told me he had lived in his house, alone, for almost sixty years. I asked him if Twickenham had changed in all that time. "Not a bit", he said, happily, "Not a bit". I wondered if he knew Alice, who has lived no more than two hundred metres away from him, for all that time.
They've never met.

A weekend away

Cymer in South Wales was for a hundred years a mining village, a history that is kept alive in the only remaining pub: the Refreshment Rooms, a building that was originally a railway station (one of three stations in the village, all long since closed)

Photo Jane Elizabeth

A wide, shallow pub one bar leads off another which leads off another and in each room are scores of photographs recalling the former life: black faced miners in cramped passages stare bleakly back at the camera. A painfully young Prince of Wales opens the apprenticeship and training centre. The Cymer Rugby Club smile grimly out of 1952. There are photographs of new lifts, machinery, cranes, towers being opened, and of collieries being closed. In the room with the pool table a vast large-scale map of the area shows the seams of coal, and the mines they sank to dig them, collieries that closed, one by one, from 1970 to 1996 as the seams were gradually, eventually exhausted.

It was Saturday evening and the pub's restaurant were getting ready for a busy service. In the lounge bar, at the table next to us five ladies of a certain age enjoyed a pre-dinner drink while they studied the menus. They were dressed smartly and their combined perfume gently suffused their corner of room. They didn't speak to each other much - perhaps the evening was still young, perhaps our presence was inhibiting. I wondered where their husbands were. The barmaid took their order: the popular choice was a steak, well-done, not cheap at £14.50. "No, no peas with it" said one, firmly, affronted at the suggestion.

The other side of us sat a family : parents, daughter-plus-boyfriend, younger sister, granny. The boyfriend was making an effort: sitting up straight, hair and green t-shirt both well clean, Earring, yes, but a discreet one. Bracelets, yes, both wrists, but not too many; Necklaces? Yes, three, but including a crucifix so not too menacing. He sipped his beer and listened carefully laughing in the right places. I concluded that the pair hadn't been going out very long. The barmaid took their order, the popular choice was a steak, well done 'does it come with french fries ?'

In the next bar a group of men watched Leinster v Munster on S4C. with the commentary in English. They were drinking cold Guiness and lager.

And then there was us - three egregious English Mountain Bikers with wild stories of how fast we had descended White's Level* and hitching up our trouser-legs to compare cuts and bruises. For where there were once mines and freight railways in the Afan Valley, there is now the Afan Forest Mountain bike centre, with 100km of purpose built, hair-raising single-track bike trails which draw mountain bikers from all over the country, alien lycra-clad beings in the valley communities. The barmaid came and took our order: The popular choice was three more pints of bitter.

We cycled 70 miles in three days, back-breaking climbs and tingling descents. In the evenings we cooked for ourselves and at lunchtimes we had vast and welcome portions of carbohydrate based meals at the Afan Mountain Bike centre. I punctured twice and broke a valve once We got soaked to the skin and covered from head to toe in mud. We had an excellent time.

We were there from Friday to Sunday and between us we probably spent £500 in Cymer. I wonder if that is enough to keep the village afloat.

*not quite this fast

Swiftly but gingerly

The half-second or so between the realisation that you are going to crash, and the actual crash lasts an age: time really does slow down, the brain, astonishingly, works faster (it's possible, then)

Nervosa by forezt

On Monday, in the short moment between jamming on my brakes and hitting the floor a great many thoughts passed through my mind:

• I am about to have a crash
• It can't be more than three months since my last crash: bad luck? or bad cycling?
  
• My brakes are rubbish, I should have sorted them out weeks ago
• I wonder whether I will be injured when I hit the ground?
• I wonder whether the dog will be injured when I hit the dog?
• After I have hit the dog, and I am on the ground, very possibly injured, will the dog, very probably angry, take the opportunity to bite me?
  
• After I have hit the dog, and I am on the ground, very possibly injured, will the dog's owner, very probably angry, take the opportunity to bite me?

And then I hit the dog.

It was a large, reddish deaf dog, with two large dog-friends. The other two had heeded my bell and swerved away to avoid collision, but the third veered directly into my path.  I did brake hard, and can't have been going very fast when I hit it for it yelped, loudly, and then it ran off.  Swiftly but gingerly, I picked myself up off the path and got to my feet.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see the beast's owner running toward me; so I leapt smartly back on to my bike - time enough to look for grazes later - and pedalled away.

As I escaped I heard, behind me, the breathless owner yell at me: 'Sorry!'

Fashion Statements

On Thursday while cycling to work I was overtaken by another cyclist.

Now, that doesn't happen very often, and when it does I am always a little peeved, but this time I was actually mightily annoyed because

1. I was going at 23mph; you just don't expect to be overtaken at 23mph on a London road; you have no business being overtaken at 23mph on a London road
2. His bike was equally as inexpensive as mine, thus invalidating my normal excuse when this happens.
   
3. Despite his cheap bike, he was clothed from head to toe in bright, dafodill yellow, brand new, 2008 Saunier Duval kit. Who did he think he was? Ricardo Ricco?
   

I haven't been sitting around wasting my summer. I've been sitting around watching Le Tour on Eurosport, so I knew what to do: I immediately kicked hard, bridged the gap and got right on his wheel, where I was able to draft comfortably for quarter of a mile or so (at an impressive 26mph) before a gear change and a noisy derailleur click gave away my presence.

He glanced behind and saw me, then he feathered his brakes just enough to break my rhythm, stood up on his pedals and shot off, calves bulging like base-balls, his skinny yellow backside weaving from side to side through the traffic.

We cyclists are anything but naïve and I knew exactly what this meant, I filled my lungs and bellowed after him as loudly as I could: "Druggie!"


Meanwhile it was my birthday on Tuesday and I got a manbag. I have been out wearing it once. It's OK as long as the kids don't mention it.

They mention it a lot

Just 15 seconds

picture by Dioboss

The worst part of the triathlon is coming out of T2 (the second transition: bike to run)

The point about transition is: you have to concentrate.

Otherwise you might spend valuable seconds, say, running the long way way around the bike racks, falling over your own pedals and then pulling your elastic laces too tightly and feeling your toe slowly and irretrievably bruising between km3 and km4.

But that's the same for T1, I hear your cry, so what's so special about T2?

Well, what makes T2 different is: it's the start of run. So, you rack your bike, you change your shoes, you straighten up slowly and you gingerly test the legs that have turned to jelly from the cycle-ride and you get going and you suddenly realise that there's no point jogging the 200m from transition area to the start line... dude you've gotta RUN¹

I was in the Thames Turbo Triathlon. I achieved a personal best [:-)] 2min 20sec faster than last year, with improvement on all three legs (in retrospect I realise 5 mins was hopelessly unrealistic)

I copped a red light at the junction by waterworks; I wobbled and faltered when I took the u-turn at the roundabout much, much too fast; .... yes, I got lost in T2....; and I stopped momentarily at km3.5, adjusting my elastic laces in a (no doubt) vain effort to save my toenail. And, infuriatingly, I ended up finishing just 15 SECONDS slower than my mate John.

Not that I am competitive or anything.

When I went back afterwards to retrieve my bike my neighbours were telling war stories. "I overtook you on the bike", 652 announced to 534 (rather gleefully, in my opinion) "and I overtook you again during the run!"

"Yeah," said 534, only slightly annoyed, "so I sure whupped you in the transition, didn't I?"


In other news: in a fit of inexplicable absent mindedness last week, we somehow forgot all about the credit crunch and went and bought a house (yes, we're those ones mentioned by name in the recent Halifax market survey). Oh well, we'll enjoy it when we retire. When perhaps it will again be worth what we paid for it.

Meanwhile to any of my American readers who'd like to rent a beautiful 15th Century English house, in the charming town that Henry James loved and treasured... well now's your chance.

-----------------------------------

¹ My children tell me that only Americans can use the word 'dude' and get away with it; but I rather think I carried it off.

Simplifying My Life

I could kick myself.

Really: what's the point of having a World Cup Wall Chart if I don't read it? What an idiot.

In my defence: I never seriously thought England had a chance of making the semi-finals; but obviously I would have at least pencilled it in to the calendar, wouldn't I? You would think so, wouldn't you? A clue: 'no'.

So, at 8pm on Saturday England will play France in the semi-final of the World Cup..... and Mrs Botogol and I will be at a gay poetry reading.


Early this morning, thundering four abreast on our hardtails down the tow path at Ham, my friend announced he was simplifying his life. We were surprised, we said. On whole, we told him, he seemed pretty simple to us already. No, he said, by simplifying he meant he was jettisoning the unnecessary, the distracting, the inconsequential and the inessential in his life.

Well, we naturally assumed he was dumping us and we were a trifle miffed. "What, after all these years?", we asked, and I quickly mentioned the inner tube he still owes me.

But it turned out he didn't mean us at all. He meant... well.... So far as I could gather he meant he couldn't make the poker school at the Cabbage Patch of a Wednesday evening.

Simplify his life. And he's not even a Quaker (#41)

But maybe he has a point; maybe you CAN'T follow rugby AND go to gay poetry evenings.
Not in the long run.

Mud and Philosophy

Muddy Bike + Tired Legs = Dirty Smile
Originally uploaded by gonebiking.

Every Sunday morning at 7.45am I pull my weary body out of bed, put on a pair of baggy lycra shorts and go mountain biking with two friends (counting Jake, I have three friends).

Last Sunday my bike and I celebrated 3000 miles together: this magic number rolled up on my handlebar computer somewhere in the middle of Richmond Park (I can't be sure precisely where: having anticipated the moment for months when it came, of course, I missed it)

3000 miles! 3000 mainly muddy miles, for south west London has unexpected pleasures to offer the enthusiastic mountain biker. That's around 170 Sunday morning outings, perhaps 100 ascents of Richmond Alp, 75 crossings of the Col de Teddington, 30 wild descents of the Wimbledon Common Massif.

I like statistics.

• miles covered - 3000
• punctures in the rain when I was in hurry - 7
• punctures in fine weather when I have all the time in the world - 0
• broken spokes - 3
  
• new front tires - 2
• crushed squirrels -1
• dog bites, while actually cycling along quite fast, actual teeth actually closing on my foot - 1
• falls on to hard, dry ground - 4
• falls into the cold, clammy River Crane - 1
  

We go pretty fast, for forty-something mountain bikers, but not so fast that we can't speak. "Of course its more than 3000 miles, really", I remarked casually, carelessly, to my cycling buddy as he pedalled, red faced, sweating and panting beside me, dutifully admiring the display that read 3001 "yes, a lot more than 3000 miles if you count the miles I've ridden with the computer not working"

"Well I don't count them," he replied, "No one would: just as the tree that falls in the forest with no one to hear it, makes not a sound, so the mile cycled without a computer to record it, is a mile untravelled" and with that he shot ahead.

Now, over the years the conventions for philosophical argument on two wheels have become very well established between us: in order to make your rejoinder you have to catch up, pull out of the slipstream and work your way alongside.

Put it this way: it's a form of philosophy in which you don't waste words.

It's also a form of debate that has the advantage of being the only type of philosophical discourse, at least so far as I am aware, that can be won by the strength in your calves. It's a bit like Alan Turing's run-around-the-house-chess, except you are more likely to end up sprawling on the floor with the contents of a water-bottle emptied down the back of your neck (a roughly 2 times in 170 chance, to be precise).

I couldn't quite catch him, so I squirted my water-bottle from a distance. I missed.

But 3000 miles! Did I celebrate? Reader: I held a margarita party. But is it still a party, if nobody comes?

Triathlon Tales

I like to think of myself as a hoopy frood so when I got out of the pool, dead tired, wet, breathless, shoulder sore, 11 whole long minutes after I had splashed my way in, and did I say cold and wet? and I forced myself to jog through to the transition area, I consoled myself with a heart-warming comforting thought: "At least", I thought, "at least I know where my towel is"

But it wasn't! Not only had my bike-rack neighbour overtaken me swimming but he had used the opportunity afforded him to steal my towel. "Sorry, mate, my mistake - use mine", he said, and reasonable it may have been, but it just wasn't the same. I was so put out I could hardly swallow my carbohydrate and caffeine gel.

Reader, I didn't swim fast; in fact only a couple of dozen people in the whole race were slower than me, but I didn't drown, and I had enough energy left to finish in the top half of the cycling, and to overtake more runners than overtook me. In the overall rankings I finished in the top two thirds, which was my aim, so I am happy.

Thames Turbo Triathlon over and done. What will I do with myself in the mornings now?

Mortal Tired

I am training and I am mortal tired, day and night.

Every morning I BIKE 18 miles to work, where I shower and doze lightly in my office, reading blogs and deleting emails until New York opens, then I work until midnight. You see, on top of the training, I also have an extreme job.

On the plus side I get to take London and NY lunch breaks (5 dreary km RUN on the treadmill / 500 choking metres SWIM in the pool) Also we get fluffy towels in the corporate gym, I have a plant in my office and I can enjoy being in stimulating, diverse workforce with whom I can leverage ideas in a atmosphere of mutual respect.

Eventually, late, late in the evening, long after those with flexible working hours have gone home (5.30 sharp), I perch my saddle-sore backside on my uncomfortable £200 super-gel saddle and BIKE home, where I eat, watch Desperate Housewives and take on Mrs B in our nightly game of strip scrabble before sinking gratefully to bed. There, every night, I experience the deep, deep sleep of the weary from which nothing Mrs B can do rouses me, save ever-so-gently pulling the duvet over onto her side of the mattress.

You see, I am training and I am mortal tired (often too tired to blog even). My mid- life- I- am- still- young- what- are- you- talking- about- there's- nothing- wrong- with- my- knees- triathlon is in just seven and a half weeks time.

For the next eight weeks I will be mostly blogging about Triathlon

BIKE
Training here going very well: I am averaging at least £50/week and set a new personal best - £75 - during last Tuesday's lunch break in Evans where in just ten glorious minutes I bought:

• a sly, Hi-Visibility Waistcoat (never again will I cycle after dark dressed entirely in grey, not after that Stockwell-motorbike-incident, no way) - £30
  
• a new extra-bright LED rear light with seventeen different flash-patterns (old one actually brighter, but with insufficiently cool flash-patterns) - £20
• cool nine-way miniature aluminium multi-tool set, in its own wallet (to fit new light on bike immediately) - £15
• new water bottle (old one smelt funny, somehow) - £3
  
• three new inner tubes (puncture on my second day. 8'45" tube change) - £6
  

On the way home that evening, somewhere in Battersea, knees pumping, bike flying along I hit a pothole so hard that everything not totally alan-keyed to the bike fell off on to the road: lock, panniers, water-bottle, pump, me.

Life and Death

Put simply, my mind was elsewhere.

My mind was hurtling down a powdery-snowy, yet smoothly pisted Tulipe (rouge) in the no-longer-slushy french Alps, at 50mph, ski tips glinting in the bright sunlight, Mont Blanc shimmering in the distance, my mind was busy executing point-perfect parallel turns

Meanwhile, my body was travelling at 5mph, perched my shiny new racing bike somewhere in grim, gun-ridden South London, half way home.

It was dark, it was raining hard - no, it was harder than that - and I was sneaking into the conveniently large space that had opened up between the curb on my left hand side and, on my right, a large HGV that was omigod- it- was- actually- turning- left.

The RoSPA is an worthy organisation isn't it? In its useful leaflet on HGVs and Cyclists entitled 'Avoiding Sudden Death' it opines, hepfully:

In a collision between a lorry and a cyclist, it is invariably the cyclist who will be injured

You're probably thinking "Well, at least that's cleared that one up, then". I'm thinking: "A curse be on the RoSPA". Because I calculate I've wasted a good three-quarters of an hour of my life since I read that trying to imagine a scenario where a collision results otherwise.

Mind you, though that is 45 minutes I'll never get back, it didn't seem anywhere near as long as the 2.5 seconds I spent on Friday night contemplating my certain death and at the very least - I reckoned - a buckled wheel and misaligned front deraileur, and I bet they'd charge me £60, minimum, at the bike shop to fix that, if I wasn't dead that was, and can you get a bike resprayed if it's scratched? If it is brand new I mean, and wouldn't it be funny if Reynolds was the one that scraped me off the pavement and he got to blog about it before I did?

I braked hard. I lived. I discovered that in a collision between a cyclist and a pedestrian-safety barrier, it's the cyclist who invariably ends up with the sore elbow and wounded pride.

When I got going again, I could see up ahead a old man ahead plugging away on a Brompton, - a perfect opportunity to establish a more elevated place in the pecking-order of the road, and I cheered up, and hared off after him.

Next week, I'm going to swim to work.

SWIM, BIKE, RUN

So far, my preparations for my rite-of-middle-age-passage triathlon in May (gulp) have consisted of spending a very large amount of money on equipment. In other words things are going very satisfactorily indeed.

My biggest regret has been choosing an event which requires no wetsuit, meaning that the extent of my ambition for SWIM (not swimming, we triathletes don't say 'swimming', we say SWIM) has been limited to a pair of bunch-of-grapes speedos and £50 goggles. (Note to self - can I at least get a exorbitantly priced hat anywhere, I wonder?)

But on the other hand, even if I do have admit to some disappointment on the SWIM prep, the BIKE part (we triathletes don't say 'cycling' we say 'BIKE') has gone exceptionally well: I have bought a shiny new bike.

Well of course I have bought a shiny new bike - that's what middle-aged triathletes do, isn't it? I chose the colour to match my top. It cost £500, which was a little disappointing, until I remembered the accesories and with those I was easily able to make it over the magic four figure split.

With hindsight, I can't think why I went for this triathlon idea at all, because I have to say that, basically, RUN (we triathletes, well you get the point) is also bit disappointing. On the positive side, only half way through my training regime, I have managed to beat my PB already, but when you consider that my RUN PB was only £74.99 on a pair of trainers from J&B, you won't be impressed. I should have entered l'etape du tour which would have required a lot more kit. Still, I have my personal RUN-shoe fitting session on Saturday which should keep me up to schedule. I have targeted £100/week for weeks 4-8 rising to £150 in weeks 9-12.

I wonder how much a tri-suit costs. A really good one, I mean.

Next week I am going to ride my bike.

Geek of the week

Here's a cool thing: here's the cycle route that I took last week, displayed on Google Maps . How cool is that? I feel the urge now to try and work out how to embed this in my own page, which seems hard.

Wicking and other modern miracles

Back in the last century if I wanted to go out on my bike I'd put my anorak on (well, yes, all right, I'd put my Parka on). If I pedalled hard I became hot and sweaty. If I pedalled very hard I became very hot and very sweaty. In those days we didn't have wicking base layers, we took our jumpers off.

In the 21st Century, like everyone else I know, I have a special outfit for cycling and a quick ride on my bike necessitates going upstairs for a complete change of clothes.

I wear Tardis shorts (perfectly cut on the outside to conceal the middle-aged backside, a close inspection of the contents will reveal within an astonishingly sizeable, completely flexible, self-contained and separate padded layer) and I have choice of two tops: the one thin and short-sleeved, and too cold in the winter, the other thick and long-sleeved and too hot anywhere outside the arctic circle.

Until this Christmas that is! A fruitful piece of shopping yielded no presents at all for my loved ones, but for me: a brand-new, windproofed / shower-proof / low cut back / grey and black, zipped-rear-pocket cycling top. And best-of-all, with that sina-qua-non of sporting clothing, the cleverest invention of C21: zippable armpit-ventilation holes.

How we ever did without these miracles of modern clothing design, I don't know. I have made sure to have them in all clothes worn in situations where over-heating is in a remote danger (ski-jacket, walking jacket, cycling top, interview suit, pyjamas).

On Boxing Day my friend and I managed 16.5 wet and muddy miles along the Crane River and Grand Union Canal in 1 hour 31 mins, average speed 11mph. I wore my new top and, much to the envy of my comparatively ill-clad friend, whenever the going became harder or softer I was able to easily regulate my temperature simply by adjusting the armpit holes. We stopped every 200 metres or so.

My top was a dream: showers bothered me not; my lower back was snug and warm, the wind penetrated my jacket solely through the gaping armpit holes, the only moisture that failed to entirely wick away being the cold, smelly moisture of the River Crane sloshing around in my right shoe (following an, admittedly ill-advised, armpit-hole adjustment on the move. They should put something in the instructions about that). At least it wasn't the GUC.

My top cost just £485. The stretch-fitting (to tell the truth, I'm not totally sure about it) wicking base layer: £79.99. It's good job Mrs Botogol never reads my blog.