Noah's Ark in Portugal !!

"We haven't had any rain since November" said Antonio's wife Claudia when I booked a week's training in Portugal. "It's been 25 degrees or more for weeks if not months" she said. "Come and do some training with Antonio in early April. The weather will be beautiful."

And what she had said of course was true. There hadn't been any rain for months. And the weather had been beautiful - pretty much since last November. What is also true however is that I seem to have an incredible ability to bring rain nearly every time I go to the Algarve - so much so that I even now get emails from the locals when it does rain asking me if I've just arrived! 

Still raining.......

Believe it or not he then put on yellow marigold gloves too !!!!!

This is a big tree to be blown nearly in half

And so, encouraged by Claudia's enthusiasm, Antonio, Ally and I met up to cycle for 4 or 5 days in the "sun" last Thursday. Sun? Hmmm. Well not quite: wind, storms and rain: yes. But sun? Well very little. But it did not "just" rain this time: oh no......this time the sea tipped upside down and dropped its contents on us. We had ocean's of rain. And masses of wind. The wind in the picture is blowing a 20 foot high palm tree in my garden in half !!

In fact there was so much rain that in a short space of 5 days my iPhone broke through water damage; my swimming pool overflowed; my SKY TV system rarely worked as the satellite signal couldn't get through, the remote controllers for the electric gates broke (all 3 of them) through water damage, water got into the heating and air con system dripping in the house and parts of my bike went rusty !!!!!!! Lovely.

It wasn't all rain: during the 5 days I was there (Ally was there for slightly less) we did eat outside at lunchtime twice and we did cycle once out of our five training sessions in the dry. As indeed the picture below shows. On the whole however it was ridiculously stupidly wet. 

The sun does shine occasionally....

But you know in many ways that was a good thing. Because on the actual trip it might well rain every day too. So what better way of testing out the equipment? And we learnt a great deal: we learnt that overshoes, whilst essential in that they work a bit, absolutely do not keep your feet dry and thus on the actual trip more socks are needed. We learnt too that the pockets in waterproof coats are not waterproof at all and ziplocked plastic bags are essential to protect money, phones etc. We learn't that without mud guards you get filthy dirty all over your back very very quickly indeed.

And we learn't something else and even more important too. We learnt that the rain just didn't matter: because we loved it. All three of us loved the entire five days training that we did. We rode 400km (Nigel, Antonio) and 300km (Ally) and we loved it. We had a fantastic time. Was it hard? absolutely. Did it hurt and tire us out? Of course. But it was wonderful nevertheless.  

We also learnt more about each other: we learnt that Antonio rides sometimes like a duck (see above);

We learnt that the Portuguese men seemingly can't resist blonde haired Irish girls (see below);

And we learnt that Antonio is slightly like a ballet dancer when he's limbering up (see below) 

And we learn't much about ourselves from a cycling viewpoint too. We learn't that doing 100km in a day is massively more than the 60 km training efforts and we all need to try hard and do more longer rides in training; we learn't that energy conservation in terms of speed and replenishment is utterly vital; we learn't that going too fast is so very counter productive and we learn't that muscle conservation through appropriate "easy" gear selection is also very important.

All in all however we learnt that this is one hell of a challenge - but one we can't wait for! Bring it on !!