Its been a while for sure (a catch up)

Hi all...

I had a post already started with me blabbing on about how the word "friend" has been devalued.  But it has stagnated and the last time I added to it was about 4 weeks ago.  So, I've deleted it and just want to do a bit of a catch up with whats been going on with me etc.

I've been training hard(ish) for the Prudential RideLondon which, assuming I'll publish this entry today, is now only 5 days away. Registration is going to be on Thursday where after work I'll be heading to the ExCel centre in London to pick up my timing chip and rider numbers in readiness for the start on Sunday morning.

Its slowly starting to sink in now, especially as yesterday I found my details are available to be looked up with this years riders:


Its been a good journey overall despite the soreness to my "gooch".  My fitness has definitely improved and I've really smashed my target weight to the point where I now do NOT want to be any lighter as I seriously cannot remember the last time I was in the 12 stone range...

A couple of weekends ago I went out on my last "big" training ride.  Yeah it was only 60 miles, but on the journey I did Newlands corner, Leith Hill and Box Hill.  It was absolutely melting at the top of Box Hill, so I stopped to take a few pics once I got to the watering point:





After a few minutes rest, I got back on my bike, cycled about 100 metres and stopped again.  Why?  Because I was presented with this view which in my opinion is the reward for making it up there...




Fortunately, the weather on Sunday 29th is meant to be cooler than the day I did that as it was about 32 degrees at the top of Box Hill.  Yep, you could really see where my cycling shorts stopped and the sun exposed skin started.

WitWitWoo
At the start of the year when I was living and breathing SlimmingWorld in an effort to lose weight, I googled "SlimmingWorld scotch eggs" as I was craving the sausagemeat wrapped snacks.  Anyway one of the results took me to this lady's blog where sure enough there was a recipe for SW friendly scotch eggs.  While I was there I had a nose around at her other blog entries to see if there were any other recipes I could nab.  This person (lets call her "Kate" because thats her name) has in excess of 6k followers etc.  So I left a comment on her scotch egg recipe with an idea of blitzing a chilli into the sausagemeat and making "dragon eggs".  A few days later I was surprised to get a response from her with her liking my suggestion.

So from there I would check in with her on twitter as she was a very active poster and we sometimes exchanged messages over the twitter direct messaging system.  I'll always remember her "saying" to me "Look Dave just ask me out on a date already"  Bear in mind this was all before Keegan and I went to Kaprun in February.  It was primarily the reading of her blog that made me want to start blogging once more of which my random ramblings came about.  We exchanged messages over twitter while I was in Austria but the message exchanges became less frequent.

Anyway, last week on my birthday I went to her blog facebook page and couldn't believe what I was reading.  It was a post but written by her son saying how she had passed away the day before.  She was only 47.  Kate had been feeling unwell the previous week and had been admitted to hospital where she was seemingly on the mend only to have a stroke on early Sunday morning and she passed away Monday afternoon.

On the post was a link to a GoFundMe page to help the family pay for the funeral expenses.  It has a target of £3,000.  They had met the target in two hours...  The donations are still going in even 6 days later.  I've just had a check now and they're up to £12,538.  It just goes to show how well liked this lady was / is.

https://www.gofundme.com/funeral-fund-for-mum

if you also fancy checking out Kate's blog, here it is:

https://witwitwoo.com/

But it just goes to show that any of us can go at any time, to quote a scene from the fellowship of the ring:

Frodo: I wish the ring had never come to me, I wish none of this had happened. 

Gandalf: So do all who live to see such times but that is not for them to decide, All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you.



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