At least we're riding again.

I am, quite impressively, knackered.

Pretty much since my last post from Bearbones, I have not been riding my bike.  I got a cold which turned into a sinus infection complete with (skip to the next paragraph if you're squeamish) solid green bogies the size of cornflakes and eyelids glued together with custard-like concrete blocks.

It was very unpleasant and debilitating and yet it clashed with one of the busiest weeks in my project time line and so I worked through it.

I finally got the medical help I needed last week in the form of antibiotics and recovered relatively quickly although there's a toussel of a cough remaining.  I've been on a couple of gentle rides this week to help me deal with some real stressful situations at work.  Less training, more, recovering rides.  I did a fair amount of pushing and struggling.  Before that, I did some hiking which also involved a fair amount of scrambling up and down steep stuff I probably shouldn't have been on.

I didn't feel super-pumped this weekend and with severe winds yesterday, I decided to stay home.  By 4pm, though, I was itching for some exercise and to get back on a bike so, for the first time in months, I got on the turbo trainer.

For 20 minutes I pedalled rather aimlessly and faffed (situation normal).  I started to wonder whether I would ever make it through to zone 3 heart rate but persevered. Then the good music started and I found myself sprinting the beats as usual, doing some hard pedalling, some one-footed pedalling.  Then I climbed off and stretched, did some strength exercises and achieved yoga balances like never before.  It was immensely satisfying.

Not so good in preparing myself to go out for a ride today.

When I finally got out at 11am it felt good to be moving but things were clearly going to be slow.  I started heading for the Trans Pennine trail but as soon as I saw the car wash depot, I realised I'd left my camelback at home complete with water, food, money, cards so I threw a u-turn and headed home.  No longer inspired, feeling super tired, I decided to go home, have a sleep and try again later.

The only problem was, getting to the bottom of the hill up to my house, I couldn't even find the energy to ride my bike up to the house so I carried on up the valley, slowly pushing a tiny gear, to take myself on the path of least resistance back home the long way.

The advantage of doing so was I felt slightly better about the whole thing so diverted off a few minor bridleways to make the thing more enjoyable and get further away from the road.

It worked.  I got home still tired but happy.  Had some delicious lunch and flopped back into the sofa.   So, perhaps recovery is not going to be as glorious as I hoped but, at least it has started and that is really all that matters.

Thanks to modern technology I can reassure myself that this week I have done three times as much exercise as the week before and over half of what I did on Bearbones.  It's not time to pull the plug yet.