I was looking out for your bike but never see it. I had one of them bibs on so looked like everyone else. Had a little boy crash into me at the lights down by the Squinty bridge but no damage to the bike. Too many people around to go to fast, alot of wobbley kids not being able to cycle straight but at end of day it was not a race but a fun ride. My lowest average speed ride for ages too. Still I would do it all again.
Yes that's why I chased people - by my reckoning, they would do all the hard work of find the gaps, and I would ride in their slipstream!
......with me hoping that the gap didn't suddenly close as I passed by.
I was looking out for your bike all day Doug, but couldn't spot you. The irony is, we probably passed each other at least 3 or 4 times.
To be fair, when I was going around at first, the paded bits for my arms weren't on the bike (they came loose and were rattling around after a previous crash I'd had due to my clipless pedals
, but I got them put back on properly at the
Evans tent as well as getting them to give the bike a general check over whilst I was there), but hey, due to the amount of people, I wasn't in aero possition anyway. Had I been, I really WOULD have stuck out like a sore thumb!
What were you wearing?? like I said, I went round mainly with my yellow London 2012 t - shirt (with the road/track cycling graphic on the front) on over a black base layer with white stripes down the sleeves.
Also, I stopped at about 1ish to have a rest, take a look round the stands, get my bike seen to as already mentioned, and see Chris Hoy (he looks exactly as he does on the telly by the way
- I had also been part of the photoshoot earlier on where himself and Lorain Kelly suddenly appeared as if out of thin air, were cycling along in front of us, and we had to ride behind them after a short time gap, so I might be in one of the pictures somewhere, i.e. a dot).
After not getting Chis's autograph on my 2012 t - shirt (I thought it would have been nice since it represented the events he'd be doing, especially if he won gold, but they were being really arsey about it and only let a limited number of people to see him. There were a lot of unimpressed people there, I can tell you!), I did some more laps but was starting to get really knackered (that head wind going west didn't help in the slightest, did it?) and the last ride I did was just as they were finishing up and kept on getting told by the stewards to be careful as the cars would be using the road soon (yes, it's called riding on the road normally!).
After that I beetled off to the station at Exhibition centre to get the train home and met a guy and his daughter who had dressed up for it. He was dressed up as a red indian and had 'dressed' his bike up as a horse (seriously), and the daughter just had her bike covered in tinsel, which was nice.
Tell you what though, I did have a lot of admiring looks and comments about my bike - someone even offered to buy it, but unfortunately it was a joke and were only offering £50 for it (yeah mate, add another zero on and I might consider it!), so many people DID notice it, so there!!
