Do believe in ice!

You know when you hurt yourself and people always says "oh just put some ice on it!"? Well it got to a point when i just thought it was a whole lot of crap. I would say it too of course if somebody was hurt, but just for the sake of the cliche or maybe pretending i knew something about it.
Well as from yesterday, I am a true believer in ice. A faithful preacher of its miracles and myths, and a loyal practitioner of his healing rituals. In ice I trust!
We arrived today at Lichfield, and I'm still riding along thanks to ice. Two days ago my right knee started aching. A very sharp pain in the internal side every time I would push on the pedal. That was day 3 and I rode the last 4 hours of the day pedaling only with my left leg. I put some ice that night and it felt pretty good the next morning until eleven when the pain restarted. By 2 o'clock when we stopped for lunch I thought I was out. Lots of climbing that day and my left leg was too tired of doing all the job. While having lunch I put some ice to try and finish the day and it was incredible. Pain was gone and i could pedal like during the morning. Two hours after lunch the support crew passed some ice while riding and then at the afternoon break I found some ice for my sore knee again. And so i did last night and this morning. It's been around 480 km since that knee started hurting and i'm still going solid. Today it didn't even hurt but I could feel the discomfort caused by the swelling, tomorrow we'll see.
It's been 5 days on a very hilly terrain and everybody's feeling it by now. Paul has a pain in his Achilles tendon since the second day and today his knee started to hurt badly. You can see he's hurting. If i remember correctly, Paul's grand dad was diagnosed with Parkinson's not so long ago and you can see he's fully committed to this ride and will not quit and i really hope so for him. The same with Chris. I don't know what are Chris's reasons for being here but he's struggling out there but just keeps going, it hurts to see him pedaling always leaning or bent in awkward positions. He's dad is having a holiday around Britain and is following us every now and then, good fun.
We had two retirements in the first two days with Steven retiring because of a hip injury and Allister with a sore knee. Luke had to take the van yesterday with tendinitis on his knees and gave it a try this morning but didn't work out for him and might be going back home tomorrow. We're down to 21 riders then and to all of then carrying injuries, I have and will keep suggesting that they should use ice, simple and magic ice.