Weekend warriors...

And so, having run out of excuses, the first big training weekend arrived for Atomic Hamster. Mr A arrived promptly at Hamster Mansions and Team Overall plus the Squishy one headed off to put their stamp on the Rhayader 20, the Rhayader 20 having singularly failed to put a stamp on the race information we'd been sent...

Despite the presence of a storm-lamp on the table, the weather was pretty pleasant for the race...and there were remarkably few dead sheep. Everywhere you go, always take the weather with ewe indeed. Mr A had gut problems from around mile 8, while your correspondent was resisting the urge to throw up; the hills were almost alive with the sound of Drew sick. There wasn't much singing, but we did manage to crack the 'two fish swimming along when one crashes into a concrete wall and says 'dam'' joke as we passed the, er, dam. As delerium set in, I also coined 'two scarecrows in a field, one says to the other 'can you smell snowmen?'. No, it wasn't even funny at the time, to be honest...

At mile 17, we located a caravan site and one half of Team Andrex retired for a pit stop. It was then just a case of jogging it out for the T shirt; 3:22 and shrapnel meant that we ran the Transalp requirement of 10 min miling.

Day 2 dawned before dawn, as it were, broke. Forcing down breakfast at 4am is never easy. Into the car, then off to Eastnor Castle to ride the Lightning. Even though we were sharp-dressed men in our Pirate gear, we barely had legs and didn't know how to use them. I was first off at 6am, to discover that the first 2k of the 9.3k course was entirely uphill. Nice touch, Raymondo, er Patrick. First lap done in just under the hour, hand the baton to Mr A, wait for him to come in just under an hour later, repeat...only progressively more slowly. Mr A was standing up manfully, my hips locked up and refused to allow more than a shuffle. There were many pitstops for both members of Team Overall. Portaloo, couldn't escape if I wanted to...

Twelve hours later it was over; we'd covered about 30 miles each over hilly, muddy terrain, the day after logging 20 on the road. We'd finished sixth male pair. Admittedly there were fewer than 7 male pairs entered, but a kill's a kill.

Thanks to Mr A for the company and Squish for the support. It's like a big upside-down squirrel.

The other A-H