When he isn't yammering he is hammering. Either way I am working! The trick is to get him talking at the right time, and then on a topic you do not feel really enjoined to follow or have expertise on. For example I can zone when he is talking about his gearing or the gloves he got on ebay. Buys me precious seconds of downtime and recovery before the next effort. And as long as I am still there with him I can usually get by him, or keep him back, with a sprint – the hilltop, a traffic light threatening to red (he will always run it however far behind me he is) and the last Endspurt at Auerbach.

The weather has been a downer. Overcast, cold, damp, windy, and none of it from the tail. Grind along, check the speedo for comfort find you’ve been traveling even slower than you thought.

So it's good to have a yammerer to hand sometimes..... although I hate when I take off on a hill, leaving him far behind stranded like a beached whale, sweat pouring from my screaming legs and lungs protesting – but it is all worth it because I've dropped him but no... here he is, easing beside me again and yammering as he does so!

Oh but he can be a wheel to follow, like a magnet, up and upwards again, skulking through the almost solid wind of Brandenburg, its endless argument finally shutting everything else up as we turn and head for home again. There's a sparkle, a welcoming dance even in the car headlights above as we travel under the bridge at Auerbach, drive past the villas and soft streets of the suburbs, now pulling on a rope, the rope of home and feeling it's good that it is done.