Sadly I must begin with a lame excuse for the tardiness of this post. What can I say? Wordpress ate my first draft and digested it without a trace. Has the teacher heard that one yet? I think it went something like this…

Returning to Chidlow closed a circle for C.C.Coglioni and proved that we are here to stay. The team bus, masseurs and exotic sponsorship deals may still be a fantasy, but a sharp strip, some fine riding companions and a great team camaraderie are a reality. It all seems a far cry from the motley crew clad in a hodge-podge of Tour Down Under challenge ride jerseys that first rode at Chidlow a year ago.

So it was appropriate that our second visit to Chidlow would be our first Cyclosportif event with two teams. It been quite a scramble in the end to get the numbers up, caught as we were on the one-team two-team cusp with nine definite riders lined up and a handful of maybes in the wings. In the end Ted came to the fore and rode superbly, as documented artfully by O’Dirty.

It was a little disappointing that due to a manufacturing stuff-up not enough of us yet had the alternative Heidsieck blue jerseys to allow us to ride in differentiating kit. It was also a little disappointing how many of the nominal A team were keen to drop a lap and ride with Due Coglioni. But in the end the arbitrary assignments made by team management seemed right, and the only real question was whether or not my cold was worse than O’Dirty’s.

On the starting line Babel’s new hoops added enough bling to his doughty Carrera to fool Gary Suckling into thinking he was on a new machine. Rolling off as the V team we had the novel pleasure of being cheered on by our Due Coglioni team-mates. Somehow this adulation did not go to our heads and we rounded the first bend in some kind of formation and were soon powering down the first hill.

Though we were all a little rusty and Cookie was new to this concept of helping your fellow rider rather than ripping his legs off, it all seemed to come together fairly quickly. Until of course we got to the first hill where Babel’s youthful exuberance shot him up the road while Cookie’s considerable mass dropped him out the back. Still we seemed much tidier than most around us and we soon regrouped for the ensuing descent.

By this time team W had established itself as our nemesis for this ride, and we passed and were passed by them several times before the first lap was completed. The second lap felt tidier as we swapped turns more neatly, worked more on the descents and stayed together better on the climbs. Team W meanwhile would shatter on each climb before regrouping to pass us again.

Cookie has a number of motivational mottos, of which a favourite is “Pain is just weakness leaving your body.” He was obviously in a lot of pain on the first two laps because he shed weakness like Clark Kent stripping off a suit on the third. It started with a remark about how easy the climbs seemed the third time around and continued with us gasping in desperation to keep in his considerable wind-shadow on the descents. Had The Doctor not strategically induced a slow leak by riding over a honky-nut we might have faced the embarrassing spectacle of finishing a man down with the missing rider crossing the line in front of us. As it was the near-puncture was cause to slow down a little, at least until the last climb where Cookie defied all sensible laws of physics and left us gasping again.

Thankfully the end came soon and we were applauded across the line once again by our Due Coglioni team-mates. Another fine day out on the beautiful Chidlow circuit. While Uno Coglioni couldn’t come close to Due Coglioni’s podium finish we did manage C.C.Coglioni’s best A-ride placing with twelfth, and Cookie completed a fine debutante’s double with Ted.