Circles of Hell

As I’ve been out on my bike in Berkshire and Hampshire I’ve come to think on matters of philosophy. Specifically I have made an update to the Circles of Hell from Dante’s Divine Comedy

Alternate Circles of Hell

It’s subtle, but I’ve substituted Highway Maintenance Planners for Simonists because I want to put them in close to Hell and I couldn’t tell you what a Simonist was off the top of my head. They might well deserve to be left where they were, but I can’t believe they’re worse than the people who leave my local roads in such a terrible state. There are some particularly offensive routes if I choose to go towards Tadley or the other way to Windsor. What’s most frustrating is these are great roads except for the pot holes. Turns out Simonists are people who sell ecclesiastical pardons, offices, or emoluments. Yep, they can be let off Highway Maintenance, far more serious and relevant today.

So training and as promised I’ll not get too technical – I cycled a lot at the weekend and by a lot I mean about 300K. Pretty happy with how things are going starting to feel like I’m in good shape (with the exception of feeling a bit ill today) and can train pretty hard. With the good weather I’ve been able to get outside much more and have been enjoying the tan lines that come with it. I’m starting to ease off on the training for the rest of the week now in preparation for my trip to France. I’ll head out on Saturday and it’s 6 solid days of training in the Pyrenees, fly home, travel down to the SW and then 3 days riding the Tour of Wessex. Looking at the routes planned it adds up to something in the order of 1100K over the course of 8 days and that’s not counting the running or swimming. All in all it’s going to make May the biggest month of training yet and if it doesn’t kill me should make me a lot stronger. It’s going to be a challenge, but I’m looking forward to it and the end result is I should be certain I’m ready for Epic.

I’ll finish this post with the classic topic of weather. As mentioned, it’s been great this past week, but looks like things are taking a turn for the worse. I wouldn’t be too bothered, but potentially the same thing is going to happen down in France. I was hoping for a warm weather training camp!

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