Mugs and The Blind Matron. What a team!

Last night I toiled well into the wee hours setting up my justgiving page, and updating/improving my blog page.
This Etape thing is all consuming. I do enjoy blogging my experience, but when I'm leaving the house at 6am with the prospect of 5 or 6 hours on the bike ahead of me, it aint much fun. And the riding is hard. Hard on the mind, hard on the legs, and hard on the body.
So, in celebration of 'no pain, no gain' I thought I would remind you all of my wounds sustained when I fell off my bicycle 4 weeks ago. I'm glad to say that I'm virtually healed now, and can just about lie on my right side in bed again.

I played football last night, and got a dead leg. Despite that, I cycled to work and back today which is 22 miles. I took it easy, hoping to gently flush the lactate and other waste products out of my stiff and achey legs.

When I got home I checked my email and received news of the first donations to The Prostate Cancer Charity via this blog. Stand up and cheer for Mugs and The Blind Matron. They know who they are. Good eggs. Actually I have brought a lot of pleasure to The Blind Matron by allowing her to dress my wounded leg, ripping the dressings off, aspirating the gungy fluid and generally getting stuck into the blood and gore. She has done me proud and maybe I should take a picture of my wound to show you how good it looks now. Maybe not? And Mugs? An old mate from Liverpool. Good on the wing, when he wasn't arguing with the ref. Thanks again.

The truly great thing about the justgiving website is that the two donations are for £70 but they have nabbed almost another £20 from twattybollocks Gordon Brown in a tax refund. Anything that jabs Brown in the eye is good in my book.

Has anyone else noticed the incredible yellow blossom on the rapeseed this summer. It's very early isn't it. Fantastic. Photo needed.

Congratulations to my sister and her man, who have just announced their wedding date...the day before I'm supposed to be doing the Tour of the Cotswolds. No boozing for me then!

So, we're getting there. Maybe do 20 to 30 miles tomorrow evening at a gentle pace.