The Eagle Has Landed...

...although at the moment it feels more like the pigeon has landed! I'll explain later.

I touched down in Vancouver today after a 10 or so hour flight from London. It wasn't too bad. Movies on demand! - I saw two on the way over - first up on my viewing schedule was Pirates of the Caribbean 4 - there was nae need for another really but it's mildly enjoyable tosh. Second was the best film I've seen in ages - Senna. Awesome.

All this cultured movie watching could all have felt much less enjoyable had a helpful person working at the currency exchange shop not come all the way to the departure gate to return my (foolishly left behind) bank card. I'd forgotten to remove it from the pincard machine after the transaction and just sauntered off with my Canadian Dollars. That's customer service!

Back to the pigeon... some of you may be wondering how I've been getting on in my 3 weeks since finishing up at work. Plenty of time to get lots of training runs under my belt ready for a fast start over here you might suppose. Well, it didn't work out like that as what was initially a minor back niggle just wouldn't go away and even got worse as I turned my attention to learning more spanish at my unergonomic (is that a word?) kitchen table. I'm sorry to report that I've only mustered a paltry 80 miles in total over the last 3 weeks and this is not good news as I'll need to do about 300 miles every week on this trip. Worried? - I certainly have been. In fact at one particular low point I was thinking the game was up and I would have to come up with a plan B.

Thankfully this low point didn't last too long and improvements began to materialize. All of those 80 miles have been in the last week so I'm finally getting back in the saddle. I also have a routine of stretching etc to keep on top of things. However, I will need to watch myself carefully and build up slowly.

All this injury worry has made it difficult to really think about what might unfold over the coming 6 weeks. I began to allow myself to think it's really happening. Who knows what will be ahead of me and there's only one way to find out...roll on tomorrow, the first day of my 6 week cycling odyssey!