It's a hard knock life

The tough life of a cyclist eh? The sacrifices; the suffering; the bad hair days. I've been through it all people. I know your pain. You know your pain. I know that you know your pain. So let’s have a nice long whinging dialogue to get it out of our systems shall we.

I'm hair-terosexual, ask anyone.

Getting up for races is tough sometimes; especially if you’re a deranged pedal pusher like myself and come from a ‘testing’ background. For any civilians out there these lovely time trial events are more often than not staged as early in the morning as is physically possible without it actually taking place on the previous evening. If you arrive back to the HQ after your race and the clock is showing double figures for the hour then something’s not right. The worse bit about all of this is that one has to get up an hour before leaving to style and coif one’s hair, correct? A mane of this calibre does not come easy, no sir.

Doing a lot of cycling means getting through a lot of kit, and thus having a load of washing to do all the time. Handling all those soggy chamois can lead to nasty wrinkly skin and needs tending to with plenty of moisturiser and T.L.C. They say that the cycling itself is the easiest thing about being a cyclist and I think this clearly demonstrates that. Such a tough life! 

Any treasure in the sunken chest?

Many of you may not know that I used to be, I believe the term is, ‘ripped’ before my cycling career. But alas, all of my muscular supremacy has had to go for the greater good of cycling prowess. Sometimes I miss it; like when I used to park a little wonky I’d just hop out and move the car round by hand, or when if I over fill my coffee cup now I have to lift it using both hands.

On the left, here I am last year after winning a lovely bouquet in Belgium. Unfortunately all photos of my previous herculean physique seem to have strangely gone missing.