Got this e-mail from Fran during the weekend. It's a great humorous read. Thanks Fran...

**The Joy of Cycling-Inform by Fran**

It occurred to me on my training Ride this morning (as I hammered myself to the point of infinity and beyond [Buzz Lightyear!]) that there isn’t enough humour in cycling.  Yes, maybe it was delirium as my body was screaming to go home and my bike was excited every time it was pointed in the right direction, just like one of those trail ride horses who you dare not point to the home paddock and the post ride feed.

But I was thinking to myself, as I tried to ignore the pain in my legs, surely I could help anybody out there considering Cycling-Inform as a coaching experience to cross that line into another world.  

These are just glimpses of the JOY my mind recorded this morning as I tried to avoid thinking about which part of my body was hurting the most:-

• Training at times so hard that sometimes I close my eyes and attempt to teleport to another civilisation; (do not attempt teleporting without a stationary indoor trainer) ;
• The recurring mystery of struggling to count to ten; (sometimes even 5 is difficult)
• Making up rhymes for numbers (like “5 – number 5 is alive”) and other 80s movies references so that I can remember the number whilst I take my body to another level of pain; [the number 6 I dedicate to my Kiwi coach – I say “sux, fish and chups”]
• Waving from the trainer in the morning to my kids as they stumble out of bed and having them think that is normal parental behaviour!
• Training my kids that when I’m breathing hard, perspiration is dripping off me and I look like I’m in pain that it’s not a good time for me to talk;
• Watching your coach smiling and eating a chocolate hedgehog slice, delectable looking thing it was, right next to you knowing that it’s not on your nutrition plan;
• Trying to explain to my ageing father that all this training and racing is normal behaviour :>);
• Getting to warm up and cool down in a tent in full kit and pretend I’m an elite cyclist;
• Having to watch Karate Kid – The Movie so you can understand your coach’s 1980s lingo “wax on, wax off”;
• Mastering the fine art of taking my resting heart rate in the morning before my brain kicks into gear;
• Discovering that beetroot juice might be helpful for VO2Max and buying baby beetroot in juice in a can in bulk at my local supermarket and draining off the juice, throwing away the beetroots (I love beetroot, but there is a limit to how many you can cram into your daily diet);
• Getting excited over a beetroot juice recipe;
• Watching the faces of walkers and joggers on my training route change from friendly smiles to looks of puzzlement to borderline concern over the course of a couple of hours as I do my training repeats over the same course - over and over again;
• Forming hand signal and facial expression based relationships with walkers and joggers on that same training route and having them encourage me to do just one more when they see that I am starting to fatigue;
• Counting the number of wallabies I see on my bush training route and seeing their looks of puzzlement when they see me come back for more;
• Wondering if they really are wallabies, or just small kangaroos.
• Wondering if they make jeans for cyclists whose legs get bigger in proportion to angles on their bum getting smaller
• Developing a sense of mystery as I learn the art of talking about training with my non-coached friends without really talking about training
  
• Wondering whether my euphoria during training is delirium or an endorphin rush;
• Wondering whether endorphins do rush, or just slowly gather...

Yep....  couldn’t recommend the experience highly enough. :>)