Epic

After a couple of days of solid training, including a lot of tempo work riding solo, I decided yesterday evening that I was going to take it easy on the sofa. I’d managed to see about 40 minutes of the England-Slovenia match at the office in the afternoon and thought I’d watch either the Germany-Ghana match or try and catch up on a bit of Wimbledon. Wimbledon won – we live literally a stone’s throw from the AELTC and can hear the applause and cheering very clearly if we sit with our windows open. There are also quite a few high-profile players wandering up and down our road, so we feel very much part of the occasion.


I turned on the TV and saw that Court 18 was hosting a match that had, incredibly, already gone to 20 games all in the final set. Mahut and Isner slugged it out in the heat for another few games whilst I thought “actually this is more interesting that the football”. I took a break at about 30-all to get the kids washed and into bed, then my wife and I settled down to catch what must, surely, be the end of the match. “We’ll get some supper at the end of the game” I said. Little did I know!

What an incredible event – I’ve never seen a player look more physically and mentally fatigued than John Isner. I was rooting for him to win, not because he was the underdog in terms of skill, but because he never lay down. Each time I thought “that’s it, he’s crumbled” he would respond with a vicious forehand or a thundering serve to stay in the game. Nicolas Mahut was fantastic as well – to remain so energetic for so long was a real achievement in itself. These guys were performing at their absolute peak, on court all alone, for over seven hours! The pressure must have been immense and it told in their vacant thousand-yard stares and sagging limbs by the end.

Talking of vacant stares and sagging limbs, here’s a recent picture of me climbing the Col des Aravis (at least I think that's where I am, ascending from the western side for the second time that day) on the Time-Megeve sportive. The trick for giving the impression of speed is to unzip the jersey fully so you resemble a Tour rider flying uphill at about 25kph. In reality I was moving at about 10kph!