Next stop on 11th/12th August is my third (and final!) 24hour solo for this year - Sleepless in the Saddle at Catton Park. I feel pretty smashed up after the Twentyfour12 with various shades of black and blue appearing pretty much on a daily basis – my hands also currently need mechanical help to get lids off jars. Ouch. Good job that beer doesn’t come in jars. Attempting three 24hour races in such short succession means that I’m more or less reduced to recovery mode between each one and whilst I did think that lots of resting would be a total piece of cake for the sloth in me it hasn’t really panned out like that - not riding when I’d like to just doesn’t make my head feel a very good place to be!!

Rain stopped play….

Although I was still pooped for riding purposes, we had planned to travel down to Newnham Park for the next round of the National marathon series so that Mr Miles could strut his stuff and hopefully pick up some better series points than the crash strewn round at Sherwood.

With hindsight we should probably have better spent our time building ourselves an ark as the biblical floods that descended on our area meant that we didn’t manage to get down to the race. Things could have been so much worse as friends also trying to get there actually spent the whole night on the M5!

This is a shot of Worcester racecourse a week after the deluge when the water levels had actually gone right down! We were a bit stranded for a few days but we were unscathed relative to the terrible damage done to huge swathes of Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire and even as I write now the massive clean up goes on and on. I think the planet is maybe telling us that enough is enough.

Scully goes racing

To make up for missing Newnham we decided at the last minute to pitch up at the newly launched Midlands XC at Cannock so that Mr Miles could “go short” and dip his toe in his first XC format race of 2007. The weather was fabulous and the testing course and unexpected heat wave was clearly giving everyone a real challenge to make the journey worthwhile.

I had pit babe duties (which was actually more nerve wracking than riding) but it was nice to have the chance to cheer everyone on and also catch up on the latest gossip with friends.

The weather forecast is (so far!) looking not too bad so if you fancy a nice laid back festival atmosphere and are not already riding or supporting then do pop along to SITS (www.konasits.co.uk) and soak up the unique atmosphere of this great event. Mr Miles will be there as my pit babe and Jo is hopefully there on Sunday with emergency sugar bombs so feel free to come and heckle as I battle to try and get my failing body parts to the finish line!