Things to do when you are jet-lagged.

1) Go on the razz all night long until you are too tired to care

2) Get all sulky in investor meetings because it's 3pm and you've been awake 13 hours already

3) Lie on your comfy hotel bed at 8pm and write your blog.

4) Turn on the TV and remember just how shite American TV is.

Being the eternal (?) party animal I'll admit to 2) and 3) but alas not 1), not this time around anyway. 4) I did, but only for 3 minutes.

Came over to NY on Silverjet, cracking airline and I'd recommend them to anyone - they take a normal plane, rip out all the economy seats, fill it with business class seats and charge £500 a ticket - not much more than you pay normal economy, half the price (and three times as good) as BA premium economy and about 20% of the price of BA / Virgin business class. OK, it's definitely business class on the cheap, sort of Essex chav business class, and flying out of Luton doesn't help this image. You know you are in chavvy company when there's people sitting in business class seats wearing England football shirts and shorts and other people taking photo's of their business class experience. My dear, it's just not the done thing... The cabin crew are all very chatty and polite but definitely in the honeymoon period where they enjoy coming to NY every week and aren't yet really fed up with being continually in either a small metal tube in the air or a cruddy hotel room waiting for the return leg. The girl that was serving me had been working in a shoe shop until 4 weeks ago...The airline is losing bucketfuls of money, will certainly be bust within a year but if you are going to NY or Dubai in the near future I'd recommend you give them a go.

Been very tired over the last few weeks, probably as a result of slight overtraining, not having enough recovery between sessions / rides so I made the decision not to bring my gym kit with me to NY and have the week off doing any serious exercise. I think it's about 18 months since I did no exercise for a week, so it will be interesting to see the effect, usually I start to get huge amounts of pent up energy and frustration after a few days.

4 months to go to the Etape. Need to start getting some long rides in which will become easier as the evenings get lighter. Signed up for a few more audax rides in the weeks ahead. Alas with being here in NY I'm going to miss my next Audax which is on Saturday, just as I'm flying home. Oh well.

Reading Ranulph Fiennes Mad Bad and Dangerous to know at the moment. Just startling. "So there we were, trekking across 300 miles of the Antarctic that had never been crossed or charted before, we were about 120 miles from the nearest help and my colleague was 1 mile behind me when I fell through the ice. I tried to clamber out but the ice kept breaking, all the time my body was shutting down in the frigid water. I'd been in the water about 40 seconds and probably had another 10 seconds to live before my bodily functions collapsed when I managed to clamber out, but then the minus 120 degree air froze me instantly to the ice pack and I had to stay there unable to move or speak for 10 minutes until my colleague stumbled across me. And then after a cup of tea and a cucumber sandwich we set off and did the remaining 160 miles arriving in camp before nightfall..." And that's just an average day. Makes my "cycle ride from hell up Mt Ventoux, the hardest thing I've done in my life" look a bit shabby to be honest.

The no drinking campaign came to an end early this month, but only drinking weekends now generally, and still trying not to eat top much crap. Even resisted the La Caprice prepared bakewell tart and cream that they brought round on the plane.

Stats for month:
Mileage: 250 miles
Spin sessions in gym 10
Pump sessions in gym 4
Weight pretty static through the month, down a couple of pounds to 11st 11ish.

Wow, 20 past 8 now, been awake a mere 18 hours. Feel rather crappy.... Caffeine intake today more than I usually have in a week - bottle of coke before breakfast, two coffees over breakfast, can of red bull in the afternoon. Red bull may give you wings but it has such a kick inside me that it gives me palpitations. Maybe that's not such a good line for the advert.

TTFN.