No pain, no gain

"Well come on then, step into the painy season" - Howard Moon

As the more intuitive of you will have by now worked out, this installment is set to focus on how, and why cycling hurts, rather than this stage's route. Which was boring.

Imagine May Week, good times. You're sat on the paddock and it's 25 degrees. Lovely.

But you suffer from hayfever. Never mind, it could be worse. And you have to sit on a barstool. For 5 hours at a time. But it's not an ordinary bar stool...oh no. It's been massacred by a sadist who's taken off all the padding, and cut it into such a shape that all your weight sits on the base of the penis.

Now imagine someone's blowing pollen into your face at 20km/h, there goes the hay fever. Oh, and you can't sit still. Instead you have to spin your legs up and down, up and down, around 75 times a minute. That 4500 times an hour, or 22500 times in the day. Everytime rocking on the seat of Satan.

Could be worse though, you could be camping when you finish...

All this said I'm in pretty high spirits at the moment, and looking forward to the Alps, and perhaps even a bit of skiing. Until then I'll leave it to Monsoon Moon to rain down the pain. If I may finish with the wise words of Jimmy Carr, "I'm with Bupa, do your f*ucking worst".