Freezing red toes

One of the joys of training for a brief summer of riding, as I again prepare for another London to Paris in June, is trying to ride / train in the depths of an English winter.

Headed out last weekend for a Surrey run to take in a few country lanes, Box hill and stop off at mates place down south. We'll no doubt hear a lot more about Box Hill as it has become part of the Olympic Games road race in 2012. A mere bump, no doubt, for the professionals but I recall the last ascent of Box Hill two years ago in a sportive called "The little lumpy". Climbing up its short zig, zagging road I spied something in the corner of my eye. Thinking it was an attack from the fat bastard I had just sat behind for the last 67km I then realised it was a horse walking in the field beside me. In between losing breath and consciousness I calculated "Le Cheval" must have been walking at a speed of about 6km per hour to overtake me ... or it was in fact standing still and was going backwards.

It was a cold Saturday, freezing in fact. After two hours of cycling, in a group of 5 blokes I had just met, we were asking each other if anyone knew what frostbite felt like in their toes. It felt like I was riding on stumps as my feet were numb, frozen. When we stopped for a break I resorted to taking my shoes and socks off to massage some feeling back into my feet. Unfortunatley I forgot that during New Years in Barcelona my girlfriend had painted one of my toenails red (for good luck ... it's a Spanish thing to wear red underwear on New Years Eve ... she wore red underwear I got a red toenail ... I'm not gay ... there's nothing I can say here to help is there??!!!). It's an interesting dynamic when you've literally just met five men to ride with, you're the only Australian ... and now you're quite obviously the only man in the group with a Ruby Red toenail, I didn't get asked too many questions after that.

The days riding ended with me pulling into my mates cottage in Alford, 80km of freezing cold and the usual British fare of short sharp hills through beautiful countryside. I immediately asked him for a bucket of luke warm water in which to put my feet into to thaw them out to which he replied "What the fuck is that on your toe?"