Oh no...

...the work vending machine now stocks Haribo Starmix and Tangfastics! I lasted a whole morning but just caved for some Starmix. This is very dangerous.

Back on the bike!

Didn't get out for much of a ride on Saturday after all, spent a good part of the afternon trying to get the front mech on the Spesh to work. It was seized solid and given the amount of (probably road salt filled) gunk I pulled out of it even after a serious clean I'm not surprised and a little ashamed, even a regular spray of the mech with WD-40 would have gone a long way to preventing the build up. Lots of WD-40, penetrating oil and lube later it would move quite happily up the chainringa with cable pull but just wouldn't return back down without manual intervention so it's borked. It was the original mech that came with the bike in 2001 so it's not done too badly, new one on it's way. Lets see what a mess I can make of fitting it....

I stuck the mech in middle ring position to make the bike rideable and gave the Spesh a bit of a test ride, only five miles and my hip wasn't massively happy during or after really. Sunday was another day off (raining so not too bad) and last night I took the road bike out on some local hills, nothing brutal and all seemed fine. Took a while to get into the ride as it does after some time off but I was buzzing by the end.

My hip still seems a little stiff in the mornings at the minute but I've ridden into work today and felt great, rucksack didn't bother me either.

Running is still out though which is annoying, was hoping to dust off my trail shoes last week but falling over put paid to that and an experimental jog across the work car park yesterday showed I need to leave it a bit longer.

Bruises and bike maintenance

The aftermath of my inability to stand on my own two feet has meant no riding this week. I have a couple of corking bruises, even by my standards (I do bruise very well it has to be said) the one on my leg is a stoater, it continues on round behind my leg which you can't quite see in the photo. Annoyingly the non-purple bit in the centre is what really hurts which means it will be hanging around for weeks, just as well I no longer wear skirts to work.

The bruises are just a minor irritation, my left hip pretty much seized up and feels very bruised indeed, I also have a very, very painful spot on my back, at the bottom of my ribs and about three centimetres to the left of my spine (I know). Even today it is still sending shooting pains if I prod it, however there is no bruising on my back as yet. I can't wear any sort of rucksack and surprisingly using the clutch whilst driving has been very painful.

Today, I seem to be getting normal movement back in my hip at last and driving isn't so painful. Planning on doing a road ride tomorrow to see how things are.

I've made good use of the week (and some of last week too) to learn some bike maintenance skills as mine have extended to changing the odd pair of brake pads and lubing the odd chain. All my bikes have something wrong with them, some serious and as Jez is away until the end of the month I kind of had no choice. It's costing me a small fortune in boring bike parts.

I've had to change the bottom brackets on the Spesh and the road bike, my original plan was to practice on the Spesh first then do the road bike but the Spesh had other ideas. Even using the old clamping the tool in a vice and using the whole frame as a lever failed to budge it. I poured a load of penetrating oil down the seat tube and left it overnight. Luckily the road bike one was easy to change.

As this was the Saturday and I borked my back on the Sunday there was no way I could twist enough to have another go so I borrowed an impact wrench from a guy at work who said he'd managed to get two stuck BB's out with it. It still took a bit of persuasion, I had to apply it for a solid 15 seconds but it did the job. What a racket it made but it was good fun, I had a brief look around the garage to see if I could find something else to attack with it but saw sense and packed it away. Impact Wrench: 3 BB's: 0!

Surpassing myself falling off *

(* actually, should really be "falling over" as I was stood next to the bike at the time).

Sunday just past Ed and I headed out on offroad on a great loop neither of us have done for ages, effectively a half MTL route. Starting from Clowbridge Res, picking up the MTL for a while until on Deerplay, past Thieveley Pike and down to the Bacup Road, over that then heading through the post industrial landscape towards Ramsden Clough on some interesting bridleways, pick up the MTL around Whitworth again and a pretty much follow it all the way back, with a diversion into the new stuff at Cragg on the way.

Set off into fairly persistent rain and low cloud, the surface easy going due to being MTL and still pretty dry. Once off the MTL and particularly over the Bacup Road find actual boggish tracks for a while, it's a grassy slog generally but I've seen it a lot worse. We once did this route in the winter into a raging headwind, it took us three hours to go 12 miles due to the wind and soft tracks. The bike was actually good and filthy for the first time in ages.



Anyway, skittered down a short, steepish, grassy slope and got bogged down in some rocks. The track was raised, with a drop to either side. I did think about getting going again then thought better of it, got off the bike at the edge of the narrow section to push it on a bit. I'm not sure what happened exactly but as I pushed the bike it sort of fell over onto me, I obviously wasn't very well balanced and I just timbered right over like a sack of spuds off the side of the track, bike landing on top of me. Unfortunately it was onto:

Right onto that big pile of pointy rocks, track is on the left. It wasn't quite onto my back but almost and not surprisingly it really hurt. Due to the Titus being on top of me I couldn't actually move, fortunately a very concerned Ed picked the bike up off me and I got up. Nothing was broken (probably) so decided to get riding asap, usually the best thing to do, keep moving so it doesn't seize up. This was about 7 miles into what in the end was a 30 mile ride.

I can normally tell by the state of my riding how bad a "crash" was (not that I can call it a crash), it quickly became clear that the last thing I wanted to do was fall off again and add to the pain...you can imagine how and tense wussy my riding became, I had to shout at myself, a lot to get off the brakes and look ahead etc. I don't know why it didn't occur to me to cut the ride short and try to head back to the car but it didn't. I was actually enjoying being out in the mud and rain, I thought the pain would ease off...it didn't.

The long drag up Rooley Moor Road was a complete miseryfest for me again, legs were fine (apart from the huge throbbing bruise above my left knee) but my lower back had gotten progressively more sore and stiff. I stood up once in an effort to stretch it and it felt like someone had knifed me in the back, I'm sure I saw stars briefly. The sun had also decided to come out especially for the climb and for once the Rooley Moor headwind was missing just to add to my overall misery.

By the time we got to Cragg it hurt the least sitting and pedalling steadily, standing pedalling was excruciating, standing without pedalling was a bit less excruciating but the worst thing was transitioning from not pedalling to pedalling, particularly if spinning madly due to too low a gear choice. I basically yelped and grimaced my way all around the fab Cragg trails (and they were good) but I was in no fit state to do much other than hang on and pedal a bit (as low cadence as possible). We decided against another lap!

By this time any lumps and bumps on the trail seemed to vibrate up into my back, I was on a full-suspension, I hate to think what the hardtail would have been like. The descent down to Waterfoot, normally a favourite, passed slowly in a blur of clenched teeth and whimpers. Thankfully, the rest of the route is fairly easyish going but getting on and off for gates really hurt, particularly when my Camelbak re-settled itself on my back. We finally got back to Clowbridge, total relief! Except I had forgotten about the last two flights of wooden steps down into the car park, it was like someone attacked my back with a pneumatic drill as I rattled down them, there were tears at that point.

Getting packed up was interesting, my ability to bend was almost zero and getting out of the car at the other end was painful.

Having said all that it was a good ride, really like that loop!

Etape Caledonia

Been doing a few road rides since my last post but haven't really posted about them....think I'm actually in denial about how much I'm enjoying the tarmac.

Anyway, official result: 4:41 for the 81 miles, an average speed of about 17.3 including stops which I am pretty chuffed about. I was hoping for around the five hour mark but thought we would both have to be having a really good days to make it.

Both of us really enjoyed it (yes, even Jez), the closed roads thing is just fantastic. The organisation was superb, marshalling was superb as was the local support. I'm not really a fan of bagpipes but the pipers dotted around the course really raised a smile. Pitlochry had a real buzz about the place, don't think I've ever seen so many cyclists in one place as I did at the start on Sunday morning.

Actual ride time on the Garmin was 4:34 with an average speed of 17.8, we didn't stop much! As can be gathered from the time it was a fast course and a fast day, bit of a wind on the outward section but pretty fast other than that.

We did take advantage of a group for a while on the outward leg into the wind, cruising along at about 20mph effortlessly, which was nice. I was a bit wary but was getting quite happy in the group until suddenly the guy next to me seemed to be resting his right hand shifter on the guy in front of him's arse! A bit of wobbling and they separate but not without them nearly taking me off, I was a bit more cautious after that!

The Schiehallion climb wasn't too bad at all though I messed up my KOTM stage timing due to me not stopping when Jez had a comfort break. I rolled on a bit, crossed the timing mat without thinking then stopped to wait, d'oh. No real matter, took it quite easy anyway as not sure exactly what to expect. The scenery up there was stunning and it was nice to get a good look at Schiehallion as it was the first Munro I ever walked up.

Even though we weren't really tagging on to groups the sheer number of cyclists around just spurred us on to keep pedalling hard and coming up behind people before overtaking them must have been giving us some slipstream benefit.

My legs were certainly feeling it on the last 5% climb to the finish, I thought that was uncalled for. Jez coped with that one better than me but waited til I caught him up before we crossed the finish line..aw.

Would I do it again...definitely!