Terminator day.

Day started great – finished in hospital!

Merrell Trail Glove

Bought the new Merrell Trail Glove shoe when I finally realised that the size available in the shop was perfect – it’s just the design is so radical I wasn’t “getting it” to start with. The toe box is so big that you can move all your toes around freely – which is great – but the rest of the shoe is like a glove. They are not as sensitive under the sole of the foot as the Vibram Five Fingers and they weigh slightly more. The VFF is 158grams (per shoe) and the Merrell 186grams – but they will probably do as designed and cope with rough trails better. The people in the shop selling them are totally clueless and had them under shoes meant for water sports – they just can’t get their head around a running shoe with no heel springs.

I walked into Decathlon and saw one pair of a new full spec carbon racing shoes at only 99 euros (similar spec with a fancy name costs 250 euros) and the pair turned out to be exactly my size. In Merrell I need 42 or bigger in Decathlon bike shoes it’s a 40. So much for standardisation.

Next on my shopping list was a CO2 gas inflater and I found an extremely lightweight one by Zefal. Realising that mini pumps are useless, unless you want to spend 30mins getting your tyre up to 60 psi, I went for the lightest CO2 solution that could be found and got rid of the pump. CO2 gets the tyre up to 125 psi in 5 seconds.

There appears to be a lull in the horrendous weather so when arriving back home I chose to go out for a workout on the bike with a couple of hill climbs in it. The three day break since Sunday’s big race seems to have done me good and despite having serious calf DOMS from the running that hurt when walking there was none of that evident on the bike. Started out by breaking my personal best record up the first hill climb and felt very good once the legs had warmed up. The drop in weight is already paying off big time and climbing feels so much better and more enjoyable. (Was 71kg this morning – and dropping…). 

One advantage with the mega dump of snow and the big storms is that there are a few less insects to collide with on descents. I don’t mind them hitting off my skull too much when they go through the air vents on the helmet – as long as they are not still wriggling around up there too long. On most runs recently I’ve been stung or bitten by something at least once – but today it was the turn of something much more worrying to sink it’s fangs into me!

Passing though a little industrial village called Pomblieres there is a connecting road to the foot of the steep 11km climb up to Notre Dame du Pré. One feature of this passage is a house with a garden fence and two aggressive dogs contained behind it – at least one of which is a Doberman. Today as I came around the corner a small boy was heading off in front on his bike. The gate to the house was open because it seems he had come out of there. Apparently they hadn’t thought to secure the Doberman because the moment I arrived it shot out across the road in front of me barking and growling. I stopped because I didn’t want it to rip my legs apart so instead it reached up and bit me on the forearm as I was still holding the brakes. Fortunately it backed off after that but the damage was done. The owner couldn’t have cared less and showed no concern whatsoever other than calling his dog. Unfortunately that’s why dogs become uncontrollable – when they have owners with less intelligence than they have themselves. The bite sunk in quite deep through the skin and it bled a reasonable amount plus the hand became a bit hard to use – but the additional adrenaline really helped for the 11km climb and I finished the workout in record time over 4 mins ahead of the previous personal best despite the dog attack. When bitten I was still wearing a thin waterproof rain/wind jacket from the previous descent. Interestingly this jacket is not only waterproof it is dog proof because the teeth didn’t penetrate the fabric despite sinking well into my arm – which could have protected me from all sorts of exotic microbes. Unfortunaltey the hospital didn’t want to know about that – so it was a tetanus injection in the bum – and the other bum too because the first one didn’t work. Plus another tetanus jab in the arm. The bite wound had to be opened up with proper surgery – slicing the skin open to look underneath to inspect the tendons etc. It was exactly like that scene out of the original Terminator film when Arnold has to fix his own arm. Slightly worrying was that it finished in exactly the same way too – leaving the wound wide open. Apparently they never close bite wounds in case there is some sort of infection – they are just left wide open and left to heal like that – despite the hole being somewhat enlarged by an enthusiastic surgeon’s scalpel.

Tomorrow morning – off to the pharmacy, infirmary (change dressing) and then the Gendarmerie with the medical certificate to file the complaint. I’m not letting this guy off – even if the dog is terminated – because if nothing is done then the next victim could be much worse off than me. I’m just wondering what’s going to get me next when I’m out there.