Oh dear me, cycle training for the Rajasthan adventure has been severe hard work this time.  I’m looking back with incredulity at the 2011 me and the effort I put in for the Nam/Cam cycle.  Where has that me gone?  I have approximately 8 days to find her (probably left that a little too late) before I’m hurtling towards India on the way to do it all again in another place.

So why haven’t I been as dedicated?  Sit back and prepare yourself for my List of Excuses.

I’m no longer a Lady of Leisure.

Yes! I started work! I can no longer head down to the garage at 8am and do 40mins before the day starts.  These days I’m catching a 0616 Tube and at my desk by 7am.  In those days I was falling out of bed after the husband had left for work, pulling on some cycling shorts, hopping onto the bike bolted to a static stand thingy in the garage and watching series 6 and 7 of Desperate Housewives which just happened to be repeated every day at 8am on E4.  After that finished, it was Ace of Cakes and/or Homes Under the Hammer.  Life was so much simpler in those days.

I commute between two countries and only spend half the week where the bike is.

This is an epic excuse.  How can I train when I’m not where the bike is?  To be fair, and in my defence, I did attempt to do an exercise DVD on 2 out of the 3 nights I’m away for about 3 months. Then I got bored. That’s the thing with actually buying an exercise DVD – after a few goes Davina’s voice and unfunny jokes become unbearable and you find yourself following the DVD with the sound down and your own tunes blaring from the iPod which never ever quite match the beat of the muted original.

I didn’t book as early.

So, last time I had almost a year to train. This time I booked 7 months in advance.  Don’t tell anyone that I didn’t actually start the training with a full year to go, but hey that’s not the point!

The weather has been shocking.

It really has.  Belgium – where the bike is – has had a rubbish summer during the weekends; which is when I’m where the bike is.  OK, so last time we cycled outside at the weekends come rain or shine as I was a rookie at this cycle challenge lark and I was determined to religiously stick to the gruelling (and somewhat frightening) training schedule provided by the organisers.  This neatly brings me to the next excuse…

I know what to expect, and I’m being complacent.

Yes, it’s true.  Last time I was a rookie. This time I’m a returning challenger; a veteran, if you will.  I’m ashamed to say there is an element of ‘well I managed OK last time, so I’ll have no bother this time either’. The fact that I trained every blinking day for the preceding 5 months which goes some way to explain why the challenge was ‘no bother’ last time, is neither here nor there.

I’ve lost some weight since the last time and I think that will be enough.

I’m 2 Stone lighter and so therefore require less effort to propel myself forward by pedal power.  I’m not sure if this is actually true.  Is there a weight/effort correlation? Probably not, but hey, these are excuses right? They’re not supposed to be actually true (well, not all of them anyway).

I did it before and I’ll do it again.

Yes I did! I cycled 550kms! I did it! I can do it again!  Such misplaced self-belief is not attractive, I know.  I’m trying to have less confidence in myself, because let’s face it, at 11 I was able to do a handstand turning into a perfect crab, but I doubt I could repeat the performance now.  But, on the other hand, I probably could still do the double timestep I could do by age 7 so there is hope I will be able to replicate previous cycling performance.

I’ll get by with a little help from my friends.

There will be 21 people in the group, and all will be of different fitness levels.  There is nothing like the power of peer pressure to help you keep going when you are utterly knackered, and good friends spurring you on and not leaving you behind.  I’m lucky to have 3 friends cycling with me from the start, and hopefully 20 friends cycling with me by the end.

I’m fecking lazy, and with a week to go it’s really too late to worry.

No further explanation required.