Chain Reaction Threatens Belles Training!

Saturday 22nd May
Deep underground, crossing the borders of France and Switzerland, lies the Large Hadron Collider – the worlds largest particle collider – searching for the elusive Higgs boson – the theoretical answer to the universe.

Is this the chain reaction that came so close to threatening the Pollicott Belles training activities?

No, more down to earth events took place today.

It was a beautiful sunny morning as The Belles set off at 7am – Vicky looking especially dapper in her new cycling attire – and not a chip, bacon sandwich, or dollop of tomato ketchup in sight.

I’d had a few texts in the week suggesting I’d been giving Sian (aka Morse Miller) a bad time of late and I was expecting some payback, so I was already a little apprehensive. Sian has become famous for her understanding smile though – usually up to the point of a gruelling four hour marathon. Payback can be so cruel.

We set off down Dorton Hill, out across the A41, cross over towards Quainton, and back up the hill through Westcott towards home. Not so bad, I can handle that.

Then…………crunch………….”what the heck was that” I wondered? Had we been in the old mans 17 year old winter banger (which is now the 17 year old spring banger and heading rapidly into the 17 year old summer banger) I wouldn’t have bothered, crunching of any kind merely replaces the usual rattles and bangs. This was a new experience for me – a cycling ‘crunch’ followed by some very easy peddling and not a lot of movement. The chain reaction had begun – in fact the chain had fallen off! “Oh bother”.

Fortunately Sian (bless her) had already covered this in earlier training - ‘Module III – Emergency Chain Replacement’ so I was up and away in no time. “Ah” I hissed “bring it on” – so it did……….crunch…………the thing came off again.

Maybe I hadn’t taken in as much of Module III as I thought. So I had another go.

This time it seemed to work but I was a little less flippant about my repair – I’d leave that until I got back this time! By now I was way behind and very much on a lonesome ride playing catch up – when I bumped into Derek – our lovely postman of many years.

Derek decided some help was warranted and provided a ‘rear guard’ for me in absence of the rest of The Belles and stayed with me back to Pollicott.

Back at Vickys I discovered there is something great about being ten minutes behind everyone else – the coffee was ready, along with cakes, not to mention the calculations had already been done – an impressive 15.5 miles!!

“Hey baby” as Diana Ross once sang “we’re at the beginning of a chain reaction”.

A week to go now………..stay tuned, it’s getting close.

Alex xx