Well after a couple of bumper milage months August was a bit of a blowout – just 256.31km total covered, 62.64 on the MTB, 78.96 on the road and a surprising 114.71 indoors on Zwift. Let’s get straight into the excuses then…. firstly the start of the month saw the annual family holiday so I was away for over a week relaxing on the sunny island of Madeira and obviously I didn’t take my bike with me. Instead I devoted my week to the traditional Englishman’s holiday pursuits, ordering beer with every meal and decimating the hotel buffet each evening. When we got home one day out on the Mountain bike was enough to tell me my fitness had taken a bit of a hit and that I was most certainly carrying a bit more weight around with me than before our stay in the sun. Then predictably and probably thanks to Stacy from Doncaster and her semi-feral children who had spent the whole flight home coughing all over the back of my head I developed one of those super annoying low levels colds which doesn’t stop you functioning but makes each day a bit of a chore. Low level muscle aches, a head that felt like someone had stuffed every orifice with compacted cotton wool and a persistent dry cough every time I tried to exercise made the thought of pulling on bib shorts deeply unappealing. Oh, and of course I had to go back to work as well ……..

With all that in mind the milage total suddenly doesn’t seem as bad! Zwift as ever has been a bit of a saviour last month. Being able to just hop on the indoor trainer for an hour know that if I wasn’t really feeling it I could just get off and jump in the shower rather than having to grind my way home at a snails pace feeling lousy if I’d ridden outdoors let me ease my way back into riding with the sort of low consequences that made getting off the bed easier. My end of summer trip to the intimidating climbs of Majorca is rapidly approaching however and I’m painfully aware that my fitness is not really where I’d like it to be but I’ll just have to try and fake it till I make it or just feign injury if I get dropped as soon as the road pitches upwards.

Anyway enough moaning about illness and lack of riding, what else has been going on? Well after lots of prevarication and watching endless YouTube videos about the right way to do it I’ve finally bitten the bullet and jumped on the chain waxing trend. I’ll freely admit that when chain waxing suddenly seemed to become popular a few years ago I was firmly in the deeply sceptical camp thinking this was just another fad invented by people who seemed incapable of properly lubricating their chains, but slowly as more and more people seemed to be switching to wax I began to wonder if there might be something in it.

Of course in typical fashion I’ve decided to do this right at the end of the summer so a long term test of the promised benefits might be awhile coming, but the first chains have been treated and apart from a couple of hot wax burns to the fingers it seems a pretty straight forward process. I’ve only waxed the road bikes chains on the TCR and the Moulton, I’ll be sticking with my tried and trusted bottle of Fenwicks All Purpose lube for the mountain bikes as we head into the winter months but I’ll report back was I’ve put my waxy drive train through it paces more thoroughly.

Right, time to get back to clawing some fitness back by punishing myself trying to ride up steep climbs on Zwift!