I Have A Mad Husband, But...

Mr TOTKat can be a bit mental sometimes.  This particular time was the announcement that not only did he want to run the Parkrun triple on New Year's Day (9am Bushy Park, 10am Nonsuch Park, 11am Riddlesdown Park), but he wanted to cycle there, between and home again.  3 Parkruns in 3 hours, not so bad.  Cycling around 8-10 miles in between each is going to be tough.  (It's all urban cycling and subject to lots of traffic lights, traffic, people etc.  The potential saver is that it will be New Year's Day morning so no shops open and not a lot going on.)

So he needed to do a recce run to see what the ride might be like and I kinda needed to get out on my bike so we went together.  Boxing Day traffic was horrific.  Hideous.  Really.  Having to go through Kinsgton town centre in both directions was some kind of purgatory and the ride back through the outskirts of Croydon to get home after Riddlesdown was bordering on suicidal with some spectacular idiocy from some drivers.

That's the mental bit.

The good bit was on the way to Riddlesdown from Nonsuch.  We were coming up to a junction where we'd been before to pick up the kitties when we first got them.  There's a nasty old hill that we drove up on the day we got the cats and as we rounded a gentle bend towards the junction, Mr TOTKat yelled over his shoulder, "I hope we don't have to go up _that_ hill!".  Hah.  Hah hah hah.  Hah.  We did have to go up that hill.  A 1.26km long hill that was rather steep.  Mr TOTKat stopped at a bend to check we were going the right way (we were) and I almost cursed a lot having lost any momentum (which I get a bit hung up on sometimes).  On the way back down, it seemed a lot longer and steeper than on the way up by quite a bit.  Anyhoo...  having checked out the Hell Of The Ashdown course, there's only one hill that's rated harder than that one so I've got something of a confidence boost that I might be able to do it now with bugger all long rides to date, with or without hills, and 8.5 weeks to go.

 The interesting bit is that I'm pretty sure he'll manage it but only if I'm not trying to keep up.  So I think I'll cycle to Bushy, run Bushy, then skip Nonsuch and cycle straight to Riddlesdown, run Riddlesdown then have coffee and cake.  We'll see.