Two weekends back now, I finally got ye ol’ pushbike out for a bit of rotary motion1.
’twas my birthday weekend, you see, so I:
- Had to do something other than crush the Rebellion and sleep.
- Wanted real chocolate for a change.
Since I’m not really at fiscal liberty to splurge on say a new iMac, as last year, given I’m still stubbornly trying to pay off HECS, some decent chocolate was a compromise. And in all honesty, probably more satisfying. It was a good excuse for a ride; the 60km there and back would surely offset the large quantities of sweet, sweet candy I would surely purchase. And they probably did partly; though I suspect not nearly enough. I do love chocolate. :)
The chocolate lasted at most a week, for the record… three family blocks, and a Crunchie. And some assorted Freddo frogs and Caramello Koalas. All delicious and rekindling my craving for them. Damn it!
The ride itself was good – pretty easy, despite the considerable distance, as it’s largely flat all that way. But it was a lot to do in only three or four hours, with only three five-minute breaks all up, so it pretty much knocked me out for the rest of the weekend. Which was okay, because then I had copious amounts of chocolate to indulge in.
The next weekend, which is to say last weekend, I decided to step it up a notch and do some hills. The nearest ride in the card deck my parents got me for Christmas is the veritable Old La Honda. It, however, goes all the way to La Honda, the town, which is virtually all the way to the coast. In distance it’s not that much – only 60km or such, I think – but there’s two hill climbs of 500 or more metres involved – higher in fact than I’ve ever ridden before – so I was not confident.
Nonetheless, I set out on the way. Five minutes into Old La Honda and I was reminded that:
- I am pathetically unfit.
- See above.
After some hopeless time – two hours, maybe – I finally made it to Skyline, from where the idea of doing the same climb again seemed completely preposterous, so I cruised down to Alice’s instead, had a much-needed bite to eat… or three… I couldn’t resist the Apple pie, even though it nearly made me throw up from the resulting cramps… turns out the half-hour rule goes both ways.
And so I cruised down [new] La Honda and back home. Buggered, but reasonably happy that I’d at least done a decent ride. Old La Honda goes up another couple of hundred feet further than new La Honda, so it’s a slightly harder ride. Therefore I feel okay about having been so bad at it. I’ve finally returned to the gym in a vaguely regular fashion, as of two weeks ago – as soon as my ankle healed up after Vegas – and am thus holding onto the hope that come summer proper I’ll finally tame the full La Honda ride.
My shoulder still hurts a bit, sometimes, and is noticeably weak. When I lie on it at night it’s vaguely uncomfortable and it clicks and shifts abruptly, sometimes painfully. Yet it seems to be absolutely no burden when I’m riding, or at the gym… odd. I’m definitely leaning towards the actually-dislocated explanation, though; the symptoms just described are a classic symptom of that. Assuming that, I can only then be grateful that my tumbling inadvertently popped it back in, rather than leaving me to have to do it knowingly.
- That’s cyclist-speak for “I’m a tosser”. đ âŠī¸
