A Nightmare November

Warning: Self Pity Content!

So glad it's December, hopefully things can get better! In my last post I mentioned my knee injury that was on the mend and that I was hoping to get my activity level back up to normal if the "cold I was nursing" went away. D'oh, spoke far too soon.

Whatever monster lurgy I developed had me effectively sofa bound and off work for a whole week (only cos choice of mindless telly was better than what I can watch in bed), then another week slowly becoming more human, working from home...In the end it was 12 complete days of doing absolutely nothing.

I managed to get my act together and get up to my folks in the middle of the month, mainly to visit my Nana. She was diagnosed with MND earlier this year and was deteriorating fairly steadily. I knew she had major problems moving, holding her head up and couldn't talk but she could still write, albeit slowly. So we had a conversation of sorts, the hardest thing to deal with for me was actually her complete lack of facial expression, there are so many nuances in a person's face normally.

She had refused the electronic voice thingy as she didn't want to sound like Stephen Hawking! Stubborn old bird. I left worrying what on earth was going to happen once she lost the ability to write, as mentally she was still as sharp as a tack, just stuck inside her own head with no other way to communicate.

8 days later she died in her sleep(as often happens with MND). It was quite a shock but also a relief at the same time. It was no sort of a life and I'm convinced she took the only control option left to her in the end by refusing to eat much..like I said stubborn. As you can imagine I was pretty pleased I'd managed to get to see her.

On the way home after the funeral (Wednesday 23rd), I stopped off at Glentress for a bit of a ride. My fitness had long since gone over a cliff due to knee injury followed by lurgy and my original plan was to just pootle round the red, just pedalling, thinking things over, enjoying the endorphins.

I ended up doing the black climb (why, I have no idea, haven't done it for years and I really wasn't really well enough) up to the mast then the red descent. The climb was a complete grovel at times, particularly as I kept trying to attack it in too high a gear but I enjoyed the pain in that weird way, I think I needed the effort. I need to ride this climb more often when I end up at GT, its fantastic.

I picked up the red descent from Spooky Wood and had an absolute whale of a time all the way back to Hub. It was due to shut on the Sunday so I was quite pleased to be able to buy one last piece of carrot cake.

Since then I've been trying to claw my way back to fitness. It's not going entirely smoothly, not helped by the stupidly windy weather and my desire to keep things short at this time of year. I've gotten a few "easy" short runs in, quite a few swims and am starting to get back out on the bike. I even set my turbo up again....not actually ridden on it yet but now the threat is there I'm actually going to cycle to work tomorrow, 30 mph gusts or not (I'm sure I'll be swearing like a trooper once battling it).

Onwards and upwards!

Stupid Knee...

Been hiding a bit as feeling sorry for myself the last few weeks, due to ending up on the injury bench. My left knee has been causing problems, I spent almost a whole week where I could neither fully bend or straighten my left leg and back of the knee was swollen...the cause of this injury...sitting at my desk!

Ok, it was after a busy and very, very long day (0900 - 2350) in which I barely moved from my desk (very unusual for me) and I could barely walk to my car afterwards. As I'm quite paranoid about knees I rested for a week which helped a little but tried a two mile run and it all swelled up again so sorted out some physio. Cycling was a bit painful, as was swimming too - which seriously peed me off! Possibly the most annoying thing was I fancy having a go at another half marathon early next year to motivate me over winter, had drawn up a rough plan and didn't even get to do the first run.

Its likely its really just some inflammation around the knee, not helped by tight calves (stretching) and possibly tight hamstrings, though at the same time I have pretty good range of motion in them? No ligament damage or anything and am slowly building things back in, single leg squats are my future.

Have now managed up to four pain free during and after running miles. Commuting is fine as its flat though at first had to drop quite a few gears for pulling away with the panniers. Swimming is ok now too (pushing off the wall hurt) and I've done a couple of MTB rides. Riding the On One was still giving me a few problems, I ended up sitting right on the nose of the saddle (not particularly comfy).

I have moved it forward quite a bit now and the back of my knee no longer hurts. This is slightly "amusing" as I had a problem with the VMO muscle on my left knee a few years ago that resulted in me moving all my saddles back and buying layback posts for the MTB, ho hum.

This has resulted in geometry and layback comparisons on all my bikes. Most of my bikes are around 74 degree seat angle apart from the On One with is a super slack 71 and the Kinesis which is 73. I also wasn't aware that seatposts can have different laybacks, up to a whopping 25mm on my Bianco (which compares to 10mm on the commuter). No wonder I had problems when I tried to set the saddles into same position on the rails!

Next thing to try is some road hills, hopefully this weekend, if the annoying cold I now appear to be nursing disappears.

On a cheerier note, my new commuter is built (Jez did end up doing it but I stripped and cleaned the Ribble components, which took ages). I love riding it, love commuting with the panniers, it just feels so much more relaxing not having the weight on my back, it changes the whole feel of my commute. I love the mudguards and it seems more comfy on the rough roads than the Ribble it replaced. Not sure whether that is the frame or the 25mm tyres (find it hard to believe its the tyres).

Speed wise I think its about 1mph slower overall than the riding the Ribble with a rucksack, but I am slower at this time of year anyway. More importantly it is probably about 2mph faster than the Spesh...probably triple that in a serious headwind as I can get down on the drops. Stealth black to a bit of more visible colour (my Garmin now matches):





Physio tonight, hopefully will be more in the land of the active now!

Advanced Muppetry....

Its a good idea when taking a hot pan out of the oven to carefully use an oven glove on the exceptionally hot handle. Its also a good idea to move said pan by the handle away from the edge of the cooker to a safer position, though taking the oven glove off before doing this was most definitely not a good idea.

Cue burnt hand and a few hours of sitting with my hand in a jug of cold water whilst necking pain killers. D'oh, d'oh.

Its a bit sore this morning, a couple of blisters on my fingers and thumb and a nice imprint of the pan handle on my palm and its throbbing a tiny bit. MTBing is out tonight but road riding may be ok tomorrow as don't hold onto the bars the same way. Just debating whether going swimming is sensible (no weeping from the burn)...may just content myself with a run?

Back from Switzerland...

Had a great few days with day two being one of the toughest days of riding I've probably done. Journey back on Monday totally disrupted by flight cancellations in the UK, eventually got home after midnight sans bike and exhausted.


Currently sat at home waiting for said bike to be delivered after an anxious few days waiting for it to be traced and brought up to Manchester. The boys all got theirs on Tuesday but I managed to leave my baggage receipt on aircraft from Zurich in my hurry to get off. On future air travel I will not be so careless with baggage receipts, its not worth the worry and scanning the small print in house insurance policies whilst totting up the replacement costs!

Will post more, sort out pictures etc over the weekend.

August - meh

Not had the best August I have to say, I think its been the lowest activity month this year with a measly 158 miles ridden and one solitary, very short swim. I did somehow manage to run 40 miles which is the most in a month this year. Currently feeling a bit unfit and out of sorts.

The reason is a combination of things all ganging up on me at once. Niggly injuries, a bout of sinusitis which caused a headache so bad I was sofa bound for two days and wasn't fit to drive as my balance was shot to pieces.

This was closely followed by a parental visit, which to be fair did allow me to recover nicely but then I was straight into the first period of on call I've done in a very long time. This was over the bank holiday weekend which meant I couldn't stray too far out into the wilds. Though the weather wasn't that great anyway.

Jez and I did squeeze in a quick blast on the mountain bikes on the Sunday where I tried my hardest to stay right on his wheel. Pretty much managed it too particularly uphill, though on some of the fast open downhills he gapped me a bit even though I was pedalling hard but that's momentum for you.

I indulged in a bit of retail therapy to cheer myself up and the extra money from the on call means I could finally start building the commuter/winter road bike with full guards and a rack I meant to build at the beginning of the year (spent the money on Bianco then instead).

The plan is to move the bits from my old Ribble frame to this new Kinesis frame. I foolishly said I would build it...that may or may not go well. It will certainly take me a lot longer than Jez would. I think he had Bianco built in about an hour, including the gears and fork steerer sorted. Somehow think its going to take me a lot longer....if I don't get banned from it due to lack of mechanical sympathy.




September has at least got off to an ok start with a swim (which went better than it had any right to), a run and I managed to squeeze in a bit of an MTB blast on Friday morning before heading north for a weekend in Edinburgh with friends. Its good fun being a tourist in your "home" city, saw stuff I've been meaning to for years.

Got another steady run in today up around Darwen Tower with one temporary misplacement incident in Tockholes woods which was hilarious. Somehow I managed to dodge the rain only have to run about a mile and a half out of 7.2 miles actually directly into the stupidly strong wind.

Going indoor skydiving tomorrow which should be interesting! Then starting the packing process for our trip to Switzerland (similar trip to a couple of years ago). I can't wait but just wish I was feeling a bit fitter for the hour long climbs.