The Ironman

It's 7.30 a.m on a Sunday, there is still a residual chill in the air, but the three of us are sweating. Me more than them, but they aren't going anywhere.
We are toiling up the flank of the Mile Bush, a two mile hill leading up to Glen Massey.
Firewood creek gurgles over rock to our left and overhanging bush where glowworms light up in the damp undergrowth at night, to our right. Now they drip patches of early morning damp onto the road, and will stay that way until the sun heats up the valley later on in the morning.

When the kids were young I used to bring them up here to show them the spectacle of the fairy lights in the bush, they would stand there in the pitch black winter cold transfixed at the sparkle of it..

For the first time this year Ant isn't going away from me, and I can tell that it's irritating him, because like it or not, he knows that my margin for improvement is greater than his, and the carbon fibre in his bike is creaking with the effort he is putting into trying to crack me open. We look across at each other and we grin.

60 miles later we are still at it, although now back where we started. "Doesn't seem like three hours since we were here last does it" He says, I snort with derision, because that is the only sound I can make.
We carry on for another 10 miles before we go our respective ways and I make the decision to enter the Ironman in March.