The dream

Woke up this morning with that slightly uneasy feeling you have when you know you've had a terrible nightmare but you can't at that minute remember exactly what it was. The most common ones I have follow the same theme. I am either: a) back at school about to take my History A-Level, b) back at university about to take my finals exams or c) standing outside a nightclub wearing nothing but my night dress. With the first two, I am shocked to find that I just haven't bothered revising. This is very unlike the real me. With the third, I can't work out how to get home and change. So not exactly the same set-up but you can see that my anxieties about not being prepared for stuff shine through even when I'm asleep.

It therefore caused me much consternation when I came to and realised that I had been dreaming about triathlon and was experiencing the same feelings I have with the exam/nightclub scenarios. Don't worry, I tell myself, you've already done the exams and passed. And you're now too old to be going to nightclubs so there is no need to get worried about inappropriately skimpy outfits. So what do I need to say to reassure myself that this dream is not real? It's not even me who features! Stupid me. I glance to the other side of the bed to see him intently reading his Tri magazines and I know I don't need to worry.

But back to the dream itself. As I said, it's not me in the race (thank god, although OH got very excited when I told him as he thinks that I am now receiving subliminal messages to enter a race for myself), but OH. I am anxious that for once he has not properly prepared for the race that he was now running in. To be fair, it was a slightly weird course - one lap of cycling, followed by two laps of rowing and then running, and then three laps of running. I was convinced that OH had simply forgotten to complete the second lap of the rowing/running section. I found myself in my running gear then, jogging alongside OH (yeah, right, quite literally in my dreams) shouting words of encouragement. Oh, and then yelling at him when he took a wrong turn off the course. Having then bumped into some 'competitively supportive' Kiwis on a tube which took you to the end of the course, I forced myself to wake up. I was not enjoying myself. I don't know what's worse - that I'm dreaming about triathlon or the fact that I am now worrying about OH's performance which is not even in my control. Aaargh.

So since the last post, we have had a very exciting time of buying the accessories for the new TT bike (I use the term 'we' here very loosely, you understand. 'Exciting' is also perhaps not the most truthful word). Firstly, it was this very odd looking water bottle thing which I have now learned fits neatly between the handlebars. Apparently putting it here is better than having it in the normal place on the cross bar in the middle of the bike. I appreciate that I am showing my ignorance here by not knowing the correct names for all these parts. However. The water bottle reminds me of something from Lawrence of Arabia, an animal skinned pouch slung onto a camel's back as vast trips are made across the desert. It has a big straw coming out of it. The only time I have dealt with a straw similar in length is at my friend's SATC party - we used them to slug our cosmos without even having to get up from the sofa.

Yesterday we took a 50 mile round trip to pick up the helmet. Please don't laugh. Think Bradley and Sir Chris at the Olympics. Yes, I am talking about the pointy pear drop helmet. I'm told it's going to save OH 30 seconds in a race. Well, that makes it worth the money, I think to myself. My only consolation is that it's black and white and will therefore go quite well with the rest of his outfit. It even comes with its own little hard-shelled suitcase. And because it is TT equipment, it also gets to live in the house with us. Yippee. You can only imagine how secretly thrilled I was this afternoon when OH announced that he now thinks he has all the kit he needs to complete a race. I mean, I'm sure it would have been a physical impossibility to even contemplate entering a race with an old-school water bottle. It will definitely make all the difference.