A beautiful image, the pebble skipping across the water, sinking and the thrower walking away. As you do. No dramatic change, a non event in the history of time and the movement of a life. It kind of reminds me of the mindful approach to watching your emotions drift past you like leaves floating down the river. Detached and not taking on enlarged importance. Not even so much as ripples.
Yesterday we walked the Glyders, and there could be no pebble skimming (thus meaning I do not have to reveal I cannot skim a stone) because the lakes were largely frozen. Some fabulous icy water patterns though ...
It was what we'd like to think a classic wintery day in the hills would always be like. Crispy fresh, wind only lifting us off our feet on the very top of the hill. A day where footing needed careful thought. So many changes in the underfoot ground. Balls of solid frozen ice, soft fluffy snow so white you can't believe it can really happen in nature, snow looking soft but properly solid. Stones glued together by various forms of frosty water, scree hidden or consolidated by snow and ice. Axes, crampons, maps and compasses, and none of the solitude you might seek out on the hill. Lots of folk enjoying what felt in the unpredictable weather conditions of the UK almost like a once in a lifetime chance. And I was glad to be there.
Oh my, it's been a big week in so many ways. What comes first though, the job or the cycle commute?
I'm working. Oh yes, meaningful employment, with remuneration and everything. A perfectly formed three month short term contract, working out well for both me and employer. Really well for the employer for I will be honest, for this project I'm major league motivated, and capable and realise I have somehow acquired this really specific expertise that apparently nobody else has. The deadline for the first stage of this is 1st April implementation and until I coincidentally popped up my head and asked if there was any chance of work, things were looking like being postponed, and indeed that could well have been monies lost. So everyone's happy.
The bike is happy because on the back of me getting paid again, new forks, handlebars and brakes have been acquired for the MTB. I've promised it a new seat post and saddle too. And there are nightlights.
Working, however, does compromise a little you would have thought, time on the bike. Except the van is not insured for commuting to work so I have joined the Manchester masses of cycle commuters. Getting a 40 minute or so session on the bike in twice a day. One journey I even dared to call it an interval session on the way home. In panic mode, I did my week's bigger ride on Tuesday before work started on Wednesday. Dicey Icy roads so the hybrid trundled around with me sat on it for 60K or so. Since then, the miles have been ramping up courtesy of commuting and today's club ride was, for me, a gentle ending to a week of riding. Tomorrow has to be a day off. In reality, realising how my legs were today when I made any kind of effort, I reckon I could probably do with Monday off too but it's not going to happen until I sort out some alternative transport to work.
The club run was good. It was odd turning up on a ride which I knew was going to be relatively short and relatively flat, but which I was doing purely to gain some of the knowledge of how to ride within a group. Soft skills preparation for the sportif in April. I am embracing marginal gains philosophy. Feeding and fluids, clothing and tyres. Detail indeed. So, going along knowing it was about group skills, I chose to ride in the "slow" group. Oh my god it was slow. I should perhaps have had more faith in myself. But chose instead to properly focus on what I was doing, on road positioning, on not half wheeling, on following a wheel, on learning the new to me hand signals and new to me shouts. I focussed on how to be a quiet but vigilant group member, and chatted to those who were alongside me, learning from them as I went. I was, in honesty, relieved by the sections known as "hills" (I am questioning this) when we were given free rein to go at our own pace and meet at the top. It's good to breathe from time to time, innit? And I may go again, although the next couple of weekends aren't going to allow it.
Next job, working out how to get a 60 - 70K ride in during the next 7 days. It's not going to be easy. Damn that necessity called work.
Oh, and in honour of the song going round my head in the slightly frustratingly gentle paced club run, here we go with a bit of Queen. One, two, three, are you ready ...
Sunday 17 February 2013
For many reasons I have changed "training programme". Some of the reasons can be seen below ...
Monday
Day Off – actual bike riding hour shopping pace
Tuesday
45mins: Easy effort. - actual bike riding 3 hours undulating with Matt
Wednesday Day Off - actual hour and a half attempting intervals on the mountain bike in the snow
Thursday
45mins: Easy effort. actual - 3 hours walking in the Peak district
Friday
Day Off actual - 3 hours road riding along Ullswater
Saturday
20-25miles on flat roads (if possible) Easy effort. Actual - kept awake from 1am until 6am with period pain stomach cramps. Puked from 6am to 7am, slept until 9:30 then went out on the mountain bike for 4 hours with hills and technical climbs and descents. I am nails.
Sunday
60mins: 20 easy warm up/20min steady (you should be able to talk in
short sentences)/ 20min easy cool down. Actual - 3 hours up in the mountains near Helvellyn in the snow, ice and general rubbly hard stuff. Blown off the bike once.
I think that explains some of my uncoachability ...
I have a Sportive planned. And inevitably a training programme. Not something I've ever given much thought to. Training programmes, it seems to me, are meant to be broken, and are also something where real life can get in the way, even though ostensibly as a current nomadic type person I seem to have all the time in the world.
One thing which I thought was going to get in the way this week was the unfortunate tyre incident. Oh yes, a big fat ripping thing with fibres showing. Kind of surprised it didn't actually cause a puncture. But it came to light Sunday night, leaving me not much time to get sorted for today. Until to my rescue came a friend. A self interested friend. One who I was due to go for a bike ride today with. To be fair, I did spend yesterday haunting the flesh pots of Eccles. Oh. OK. That's wrong, I spent yesterday riding around Eccles on the hybrid seeking out now closed bike shops and came up with nothing. So this morning, bless him, my friend got up early and went out and sourced tyres for me. Funnily, he then insisted on putting them on my bike for me despite my protestations that only this week I'd been the one putting tyres on my lodger's bike and that I was happy to do it. However, the sentence wasn't even out of my mouth before he had both tyres off and had started putting new ones on. He let me pump them up though. I really must pay him ...
So this is what my training plan for the week suggests ...
Monday
Day Off – actual bike riding hour shopping pace
Tuesday
45mins: Easy effort. - actual bike riding 3 hours undulating with Matt
Wednesday Day Off
Thursday
45mins: Easy effort.
Friday
Day Off
Saturday
20-25miles on flat roads (if possible) Easy effort.
Sunday
60mins: 20 easy warm up/20min steady (you should be able to talk in
short sentences)/ 20min easy cool down.
So I'm on day two, and already have ignored it twice. This is going to be ... interesting.
Woke up to this on loop around my head. Although more likely to be the Blondie cover ...
It's odd being home, and wondering, even though it's not been long really, am I changing. Is this oddly quirky life I'm temporarily living changing me? It's odd for me hoping that it is, because I started out thinking I was a pretty well formed mature type person (hehehe) who was kind of solid in who she was. I still am. But accepting and embracing change.
Living out of a rucksack has been interesting. I'm a little bit scandalised by how much stuff I have at home, and how unnecessary it all seems. After six weeks on three pairs of knickers (four after the merino pair entered my life) and three pairs of socks, I can't believe I have devoted a drawer pretty much to each of these things. So I'm clearing out. Throwing away. Looking around me at all this damned stuff. I may yet open an e-bay account (although not for the used knickers). How can I possibly need all these things?
I'm feeling oddly unfit while at the same time being confident I am carrying fitness. I know it will return, and expect it will do so pretty quickly. Poor body has been shell shocked by the weekend. Saturday road ride was enjoyable and manageable and well, OK, hilly but not that final hill too far to break me.
Sunday I went out on the MTB with apprehension. Even heading out I was convinced I should be riding on my own and not in a group. Really didn't want to ride with people and feel that pressure / anxiety (all self imposed I know). I knew I could leave the group if I wanted and do my own thing anyway, so I went. I normally have long periods on the bike when my brain switches off into automatic and I start to simply dawdle. Sunday was a change for me in that I didn't glide off into space once. Proper focus all the way, and determination not to just give up and say I can't keep up but to keep trying and keep trying and keep trying. Which I did. I was aware at every incline that I wasn't just spinning, I wasn't just going through the motions but I was giving it every push I had, even past the point of legs screaming with pain. I dealt with that simply by allowing myself to cry but not by giving up. Never have I done a ride hurting so much, and deliberately forcing the hurt. Never have I done a ride where 75% of it was probably me in the red. Yet because I'm out of bike condition, it kind of makes me smile in wry fashion because I know, properly know that nobody out with me would have dreamed for one moment that I really was trying so hard.
