Cows, Horses and Crayfish

Apparently they are both lactose-free

I managed a 120* km 'training' ride to Somero on Friday and after six hours and nine minutes** in the saddle was greeted with an appropriately named 'Recovery' bottled drink (although I was ironically too knackered to open it before the call of the sauna overcame me). I think it will come in handy for the real thing though. I also finally got the courage to try the infamous 'chamois' cream. If you don't know what that is, let's just say that the padding in cycle shorts used to be soft chamois-leather. So yes it goes there. I have a tub of 'Udderly Smooth' (see what they did there?) which was apparently developed for dairy cows... (I wonder how and why someone first thought to use it on places other than udders?) But despite some uncertainty of how much to use, it did indeed work, preventing any soreness in my own udder regions.

Earlier in the year - when I hurt my back - I thought I may only be using another animal treatment: Hevosvoide or horse 'liniment' (cream) - which Hiiri insisted was the best treatment. Although I'm not convinced it was, it actually does seem to be a popular sports muscle rub here, so who am I to argue - it works for tired a cyclist's legs and back muscles anyway - so I'm a bit annoyed to discover we left it at the cottage!

The reason for going to Somero in the first place was an invite from K&K to their rather lovely place there. It was originally supposed to be a traditional end-of-summer rapujuhlat (crayfish party) but ended up being raputtajuhlat (a without-crayfish party). Not that I minded - I was just pleased to get there.

Strangely getting back was much easier***

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*well, 119.43 to be exact - although I had only planned it to be about 105km originally I did unintentionally take the scenic route out of Helsinki (well Espoo actually as I even cheated and started from Rauholahti at the other end of the Metro line from us to knock off 20km). I don't think they will allow that on the TdH. There again hopefully the TdH won't get lost.

** yes I know that's slow: only 19.4km/h average from pedal power. Even worse I actually set off at 13:10 and arrived at 20:30 - so I was actually stationary for over an hour.

***kiitos again to Taiska for the lift!

PS: You can still sponsor me for the TdH here