And then it all went a bit wrong...

What is it they say about having a crap dress rehearsal meaning that the real thing will be great?

I can only hope that it doesn't work for cycling like it does for singing, because I've been in some truly dire dress rehearsals that led to embarrassingly poor concerts.

So yesterday.  Yesterday I decided that I was going to finally have a play along the near-home map of the route I'd mapped out from Ely to home (north Cambridge). I'd even painstakingly devised a route on Strava that was Home to Ely.  Looks like this:



One small problem. If you "load route" on Strava, it in no way guides you. I didn't know that, so it went wrong quite quickly.  Basically this happened:



Firstly everyone and their dog were on Stourbridge Common, and the paths are not the smooth, well-maintained, recent, metalled surface of the busway. No. They are bumpy with uppity tree roots and switchback like no-one's business. And then I ended up in Barnwell.  I'm still not sure how.  As you can see, I went the wrong way in Fen Ditton for a while, then found my route which was, unlike as it looked on the Strava route planner, totally on-road.  On-fast-car-windy-hilly road.

I have in no way practised hills. The busway doesn't really do them. I haven't lived anywhere hilly for a while. I thought I missed hills. I still do, but my hips and knees were less sure, especially when being passed by fast cars.

And then I realised that I was trying to follow the "Ely to Home" route backwards, having smacked my thumb into the wrong one on my phone (the route for which I could barely see on the screen in bright sunshine as it was, as Strava denotes the route to come using orange against shades of yellow, and where you've been in bright blue), so I pulled over (again - I'd already lost a lot of momentum to this), stopped the recording, loaded the "right" route, and started the recording again.

Whereupon this happened:


As the youth say: I don't even. I just can't.

I was very pleased with myself, having gone wrong already a couple of times (long way around Stow-cum-Quy instead of through it? Okay!), to find the right road, and be ganging on through Lode (very pretty - nice, smooth roads, too).  I stopped when I figured I'd gone far enough to turn around and still get my miles - as I recalled, the "correct" way back was longer.

There was a pretty bridge with sunsetty shades all over the landscape. I stopped there:

Road Behind

View Ahead

And then I ate, drank some water, and set off on the "proper route".  By this point, I wasn't startled by going on the road with the whizzy cars, and I knew there was a hill coming up.  I was warmed-up and fed, and it was all good. Right?

Turns out the other thing Strava route-planner doesn't make clear is when something is so off-route it's a dirt track, and that the only other options are private farm roads or turn back.

I stopped, swore, turned back, stopped again, and programmed in a cycling route on Google Maps, which soothing voice navigated me all the way home (via some confusion in Fen Ditton, but a lot less confusion than anything that had gone before).

So, what's the conclusion?  The conclusion is that I have to make a conclusion - do I:

a) Stick to the boring-but-safe busway route, and just head on up to St. Ives (~12.5 miles away), then head home; or

b) Programme in a clever route on Google Maps and just do the crazy version anyway?

Both are tempting, for different reasons.  a) is safer, and will achieve my 25 mile goal without too much stress.  I will also get to see a different part of my training route that I haven't encountered yet. That's interesting, right?  And I'd already said that I would do that route if the weather is rubbish on Sunday. b) is the original challenge, and a heck of a lot more interesting. There are also pubs on the way that will afford wee stops if necessary.

On the other hand, I've now done a trek that was 74.8% of my eventual goal, and didn't break myself (though I'm really feeling it today). I call that a near-win.  I have also concluded that I'm not doing another big training ride on Wednesday - I'm resting these little legs (daily commute aside).

Steps Forward and Back

So, I'm back on the bike again. What do you mean, you didn't know I was off it...?!

{Checks back catalogue; curses}

Okay, so, it looks like a) I've been somewhat quiet on this front, and b) history repeated itself a bit.  Here's what happened over the intervening months since my last post:

1. Cycling every day (pretty much; certainly work days when I didn't have gig gear to carry, and Wednesdays when I had real life people meetings in places).

2. Physio every day (EVERY day; like a BOSS).

3. Mat exercises twice a week (come on!).

4. Eating a balanced diet.

And then August happened.  And August has Edinburgh Fringe in it. So no cycling from 19th August onwards, but lots of walking, and a handy new wearable gadget that maps how much and where I walked (because my passive movement tracking app stopped working).

So I scaled Arthur's Seat (yay!) and even coached someone else up it (come on!). Didn't even injure myself, unless you count sunburn.  I even kept up my physio and the strength-building mat exercises (despite some logistical difficulties - you try doing crunches on a mat on a polished wooden floor... without sliding across it and into a table).

And then I fell over on my face on a simple walk back down an urban hill, a couple of days later, and lots of health things cascaded, including my one filling jarring free and me getting a lot of pain and then a rubbish temporary filling which didn't let me chew so my nutrition was difficult to maintain and yeah - living off liquid food makes you lose more weight than you're comfortable with, if you're me.

Arse.

And then the trip back from Edinburgh with Too Much Luggage and bad lifting form and behold - buggered wrist.

So I was sensible - cycling hurt my wrist, so I paused on cycling and did some stretching and strengthening exercises for the wrist, and stayed off the press-ups, etc.  Then I got back on the bike. Yay! Then I got back into the mat exercises. Now, bear in mind that I hadn't done any since August, because I didn't - I just charged on ahead regardless like someone who was intent on injuring myself. Which I did.

This was 30th September. 1st October I got on the bike, unaware of how much I'd buggered myself. By the time I was heading home, it was clear that what I needed to do was immobilise that joint as much as possible.

It's nice to find that I've learned something.  I didn't prevent the injury this time, but I prevented it getting worse.  I immobilised as much as possible, asking for help, reducing movement, adjusting everything I could to ensure that as little strain was put upon the joint as possible. (Except on Thursday 8th when I joined in a yoga conversation in work and decided to demonstrate that I shouldn't do a certain move by doing it. 24 hours of migraine-like pain later and I'd learned another lesson about hypermobile injuries.)

So apart from yoga foolishness, I am pretty much recovered (read: it still hurts a bit but I can use it and I was more stressed by not being active) and back on the bike,  I cycled to Milton Country Park on Sunday with a friend to do some walking and wittering, then to and from work yesterday and today.

It was somewhat sobering to look back at the previous two blog entries and think: oh, so exactly like 3-4 months ago, huh? I left behind some good advice for myself, though, so that's a blessing.

In preparation for 20th March - Sport Relief again, baby - I'm going to be setting up a plan for increasing activity, strength, endurance, and general fitness. I'll keep you all posted as to what's next...

So, what's the current state of play (physical health-wise), all told? I am still a little hurty in the shoulder-neck joint and in my right wrist, and I'm finding it hard to put the weight back on. (And yes, I've tried eating all the biscuits - all that happened was I felt like crap. Presumably I need to eat a bunch of steaks and cheese.  Who knows?  All I know is that there are very, very few people out there who want to talk about the problems of losing too much weight and discussing how to put it back on.) So there it is.

Surprise...?

I didn't really mean it to happen this way. There was a plan, and I was sticking to the plan, and then I got overtaken by events.

(This does happen…)

The original plan went something like:

1. Do lots of stationary bike cycling, building steadily until I'm comfortably doing the distance between my house and work on a relatively high resistance.

2. Repair old bike/ buy new bike and start taking it out for spins at the weekend to get back in the habit.

(These two things can overlap, chronologically...)

3. Cycle to work, aiming for a couple of times a week then building up to every day.

What actually happened went something like:

1. Do some stationary cycling as part of the build-up to The Walk.

2. Abandon the gym for 5-6 weeks.

3. Explode back into doing exactly the same amount of stationary bike work as I was doing pre-Walk, but not much walking outside of twice-a-week gymitry

4. Decide to "go look at bikes" (after only being back at the gym for a couple of weeks).

5. Fall in love with a ridiculously slinky bike, pay out a wad of money for it.

6. Discover it won't fit in the boot with my partner's bike, which has just been repaired.

7. Cycle home, trying not to freak out over not wearing a helmet, reflective gear, etc.

8. Fail to die/ collapse/ fall off the bike/ be in enormous amounts of pain.

9. Realise that, in order for the bike to pay for itself, I will need to cycle it pretty much every day for 11½ weeks.

10. Wash all as much of my old cycling gear that I have specialist tech-wash stuff for in the course of The Great Shed-Clearance of 2014.

11. Despair that my old cycling gear still smells of 2½ years in a shed.

12. Look at the slinky new bike to cheer myself up.

13. Vaguely prep the night before for cycling into work the following day.

14. Flail in the morning between sleep-deprivation, the entrenched grooves of bad morning habits, the sheer irritation of people digging up the road just outside the house first thing in the morning, the flabby determination not to backslide on the very first day of Cycling Into Work, the sheer lack of preparation, and massive fit of nerves.

15. Set off late for work.

16. Take approximately twice as long as I used to (probably) due to:

a) lack of fitness

b) terror

c) unfamiliarity of new gears

d) having the seat up really high to compensate for knees, which means that I can barely reach the ground with my toes, so can't scoot along in a pinch (finding myself shouting "Sorry - I'm a Wobbly Cyclist!" at traffic... entertaining for someone, hopefully...)

e) being very circumspect about:

i) traffic lights

ii) potholes

iii) vans

iv) other cyclists

v) the pavement

vi) dismounting


So that's the story of how I ended up sitting at my desk in work this morning late, panting, with swollen feet due to the mad notion that I should cycle in The Boots, convinced I smelled bad, shaking lightly, with interesting hair.

On an unrelated note: anyone want some slightly odoriferous but functional cycling gear?

Dumb

Oh hey kids, here's some advice:

When you're getting bored with your exercise routine and decide to "spice it up" by looking for a new move on your gym app (which you've barely ever used, at least partly because it's full of animated pictures of terrifyingly ripped people doing incomprehensible things with unlikely equipment), don't pick the one you think "Hmm, I bet my physio wouldn't approve of this..." and then "try a few out" and forget that you're full of endorphins so won't feel yourself bugger your Borked Shoulder.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is the "Dumbbell Scarecrow":

Yeah, the irony is not lost on me...

Note to self: if an exercise is described as "Medium" difficult... you're not ready for it.

P.S. OW.