I think the Dude's secret admirer said it best best when he pronounced that, "Sometimes you eat the bar, and sometimes, well, he eats you." Well today, I was the all-you-can-eat buffet.

After my night in Bonchester Bridge, I awoke to find myself coming down with a cold. Not surprising considering the mileage I had been riding in the pouring rain despicable rain. However, it looked like the sun was breaking and I was only 60 miles outside Edinburgh, then if I wanted wimp out I could jump on the train and get into St. Andrews for my first conference with time to spare.

Plan sounds feasible, right? After all what could go wrong?

After arriving in London, assembling my bike I decided it was time to get moving. Originally I had planned to ride from London to St. Andrews to attend my first conference, but circumstances arose such that I had to leave Canada about 4 days later than I had originally intended. This would give me 4 days to ride some 800 miles on a fixed gear. Not likely.

Now given some good training and weather (hmm... foreshadowing?) I might be able to do a single 200 mile day on its own, but four such days back to back. That is so wrong I was almost tempted. Then some sort form of sanity took over as I realized that the Tour doesn't even do that large a mileage. At most I believe they cover 150 miles (240 km) in a day, plus they are not hauling gear, they are on bikes that have more than one gear, and they have support riders and cars offering help.

Now I have thoroughly justified being a slack ass I decided to make it easy on myself and take the train from London to York the evening prior. After which I set out on an epic 100 mile day with rain, wind and 17% grade climbs.