JASON MILES

Jason steps out of his comfort zone and under a combine harvester. Or something like that.

In a week or so, I’m going to be starting a bike race and I’m getting really nervous. Nervous like I was the first few times I did a bike race, hundreds of years ago. These days I’m normally very relaxed in the days before a race – even if it’s a ‘big’ race – if truth be told, it worries me sometimes that I’m not getting sufficiently worked up about something that I’ve prepared for and most probably haemorrhaged large quantities of cash over. Perhaps it’s my age or the fact that I’m subconsciously getting bored with racing bikes.

I’m not bored right now though. In fact, I’m absolutely bricking it. The race I’m going to be doing next is 1,500 miles long. I need to take all of my stuff (sleeping bag, vat of chamois cream, aspirin, etc.) with me and I don’t know if I’m up to the job. The last time I tried anything like this was when I rode across France to meet my wife and kids for a holiday in Spain. By the time I arrived I’d spent huge amounts of money on train fares and a hotel in Madrid, I was traumatised after being chased by some blokes in the middle of the night somewhere in western France, the bike I started the ride on no longer existed and the family holiday in Spain was almost over when I got there. Luckily this race is UK-based, so apart from some regional dialect challenges I should be able to buy food without too much bother. As long as the shops are open at the right time. That is, if I can find a shop. I’ve bought one of those filter drinking straws so that if it comes to it, I can drink my own wee or drain some fluid from a cattle trough. Which reminds me of the time I filled my water bottle with some vile metallic water from a sprinkler in a French churchyard.