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*crawls sheepishly in & waves* Contrary to popular believe I am still in fact alive, just that life has been rather hectic recently & while I thought it was getting quieter, it now looks like it will stay busy until, oh I don't know, sometime in the year 2020!!

I haven't really done a read back on this thread, but just saw the posts on this page & hope all the bite victims are getting better & Steady sorry to hear about your father-in-law but fingers crossed he comes along as well as he can.

The 5 second update from me is that I'm well & truly back on the bike & loving it again after a somewhat nervous start (am doing the bike leg of vitruvian in 2 weeks time!).  Started swimming about 2/3 weeks ago & while my lack of strength means my technique & speed are absolute crap, at least I'm not having any pain in my shoulder or chest which is brilliant so it's a matter of onwards & upwards from here!

Have just started running again as well in the last few weeks after trying to build glute & hamstring etc strength back up, but am only quite literally doing baby intervals (started at 30 seconds, am now on 45 seconds & will give 1 min a go tomorrow!).  It feels utterly pathetic (although am trying to do the intervals as fast sprints to at least feel like I'm doing some sort of work!) but thus far the knee is holding up, which again is great & having learnt the hard way too many times I will take as long as it needs to to build it back up again to ensure it stays pain free!

Hope all is well with all of you; will try to make sure I poke my head in more often but please do excuse me if I'm not around as much!!

I was kind of hoping for a girls but if an order isn't going through for them for a while I'll go for the men's monaco; will need to go have a peek at sizing chart though!

Or alternatively is there any kit floating around for sale now, as would be nice to have something vaguely piratey for vitruvian otherwise will see if there are any kind souls who will let me borrow something!

Just a quick message to say after a bit more digging found someone through a friend of a friend that lives nice & close in Leicester and is available so all sorted now, but thankyou to all for your help, much appreciated!!

Did the bike last year & doing it again this year & as others have said it's a course that has a bit of everything; some short, sharp out of the saddle climbs, some longer slow climbs, some undulating sections & some nice flats / descents where you can get the speed up!

Definitely agree though not to push it too much on the first or those hills will bite on the second.  I was only doing relay last year (and unfortuantely again this year; damn injuries!) but because I thought I'd do my bit for the team I went like a bat out of hell right from the start so was really hurting the last 10-15 miles & consequently saw my breakfast again when I stopped, so will definitely be pacing myself a bit better this year!!

With regards to speeding / tricky bits, the race briefing on the Saturday morning does cover this quite well & specific areas to watch out for, but def agree with the drafting comment as they popped up at random places all over the course!