I did it in 1hr 6minutes which I was pretty happy with. If I was to do a few weeks of mountain training it wouldn’t be too hard to get it into the 50 odd minute bracket. Armstrong won a time trial up the mountain in 2004 in 39mins 41secs! The slowest rider in the tour does it in about 50-minutes!
So then it was the road trip home, which went well apart from a bit of an argument in a service station with some guy who blatantly opened his car door straight into mine and didn’t even look like he tried to keep the door away from my car! I don’t think he knew I was sat in it but I let him know after, I wasn't a happy camper!
The sat-nav avoided Paris on the way back, thank god, and I made it in good time to Calais and caught the ferry early Saturday morning. I was home in the afternoon, after a 2100-mile round trip. I was barely at home for two days before I was packing for
Donington.
Donington
On Tuesday evening I drove to London for the annual pre-home GP press conference on Wednesday afternoon with James Ellison, Shakey, Myself and Rossi. After the press conference was over it was straight off to Donington and for some reason, all day my back felt as if it had a knife stuck in the top of it.
I’ve always had problems with my back since a crash in Brno 2002 when my handlebar snapped and I don’t think It’s something I’m going to get rid of. I went MX riding with Shakey earlier this year and damaged something more and then did something in London which was about the worst its felt yet.
When I got to the circuit I sought out Dean Miller, Suzuki’s physiotherapist, to see if he could help me out as I was walking like I was crippled and hadn’t even touched the bike yet! Dean is really good and he definitely eased the back but said it needed more work, he seemed to think that the rib had torn whatever it is that it attaches onto.
