Every eye looking every other way......

First get this straight. My body is totally capable of getting up tomorrow morning and riding 117 miles on a bicycle from Somerton to Lulworth and back. It's also capable of getting up on Monday and riding to Dunkery Beacon and back. Good food, sudacreme, compression tights can all work their magic, and I've ridden the routes before, so they hold no fear. Even the weather can be beaten, well it's not the jungle or the Aspin in a downpour, is it?

My head however has said "no".

Overtraining is a funny thing. Sometimes it affects you physically, sometimes psychologically, a subset of which is probably one's motivation and joie de vivre. And taste buds, mine have just gone loopy today, nothing is tasting like it usually does. My overload is not particularly cycling related, although I have done about 300 miles more in 2011 than I had by this time last year. No, mine is caused by doing too much and never saying no. Or similar. It's too difficult for me.

So I am not riding the 2nd and 3rd day of this year's Tour of Wessex, I'm going to rest tomorrow, and spend time with my family on Monday. Of course this is all relative. In the time between arriving home and getting in the bath, about 20 minutes I would guess, I had written a list of 11 jobs to do on my "rest day", but as I'm doing the blog now it will be one less thing to get between the sofa and me. And some of them do involve the PC or the telephone, so that doesn't really count does it. And it is useful.

I rode fine today, the wind was awful, much windier than last year and a fine intermittent drizzle that feels horrible in combination with the wind. The route had changed from last year, mainly the first 15 miles towards Glastonbury, wiggled all over the place. In total it was a mile longer, and my total time was 3 minutes longer than 2010, although my cycling time was 5 minutes less. Too much faffing and gossiping at the feedstations. Given the conditions I'll take that, count it as a marginal gain.

The route of today was a clockwise circle (well frying pan actually) from Somerton to Glastonbury, Wedmore, up the gorge (I never tire of that phrase), down to Wells, up to Shepton, Evercreech, Bruton, King Alfred's Tower (despite doing the hill without stopping, my back wheel kept slipping which added an extra challenge), then over to just shy of Warminster, lots of Deverills, Meere, Stourhead, Castle Cary, back to Somerton.

It's a great route, I love the bit down past Clearwater Lake, a long descent, which was one of the few bits I did in company.

I rode pretty conservatively for most of the day, because my moment of surrender didn't come until about 80 miles in, after chatting to GB. Despite that I was very, very nearly wiped out in three separate incidents. Twice by cars (one cut in in front of me requiring sharp braking on my part, the other a man in Bruton pulled out of a junction as i was descending into the town and just didn't see me-he did have the grace to stop and apologise, and we parted friends). The really annoying one was descending Old Bristol Road into Wells, at about 40-45 mph, into the noisy wind, and a fellow participant cut in front of me just before the bend, with no warning.

Perhaps the time has come to say goodbye to the sportive and hello to the Audax, farewell to the Accelerade gel and hi to the packed lunch.

Skip and I exchanged a couple of texts after my decision too. We are off to do the Dragon ride next Sunday, and that was one of the principal reasons behind bailing out of tomorrow and Monday. For today I was pretty much on my own the whole way, either too fast or too slow for the groups, and my climbing was rubbish, fatigued. I seemed to collect a train of people behind me going into the wind on the exposed flats, only to see them all sail past me as the road pointed upwards.

Although I briefly chatted to the Father of Socialism, aka Astana Man, and bumped into the other GB at the last feedstop, there was no-one to talk to for the best part of seven hours. Solo sportives are not fun. So what point in tiring myself out when with a bit of R & R I can get my mojo back in time for a spin around South Wales in company next weekend? I've ticked of the Tour of Wessex 3-day, I really don't need to do it again, do I?

Skip suggested an easy recovery ride for tomorrow, and it was very, very tempting, but I resisted. But it was difficult. To say no that is.

Here are my stats, now in two formats:

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/88528829

http://ridewithgps.com/routes/439543

Nothing to do with cycling, but I had a hilarious e-mail from Scott Parker today. I think it went to all West Ham fans, although it did say "Dear Guy". Here is the quote that had me chuckling:

"Together in the new season, everyone starts with a clean slate and the club has the chance to make sure this new chapter in West Ham’s history is as exciting on the pitch as it will be off it.


All the lads will be doing their best to make that happen but as a team – players and fans together – is when you can most make things happen."

Somehow, I don't think you'll be among them Scott, do you?