It's been just 4 weeks since the BB200. Since then I can count the number of rides I have done outside on one finger. I stumbled in to work on the Monday whilst TSK Stumbled headlong into job hunting then a nightshift.
I have - inadvertently - followed. When he goes to work I have tended to keep working then grab a few hours sleep. The problem is, when he gets home, he goes to sleep. I get up and go back to work.
That's only sustainable for so long Not only is it exhausting, it's counterproductive as I focus on the unimportant because it's easy work I can manage. The important tasks wake me up in the night, niggling and my teeth ache from clamping my jaw shut in anxiety and frustration. Tonight I was finally tired and I fell up the stairs easily, exhausted from the week's gym sessions and 2 days hard long work hours.
As I got ready for bed I found myself asking, "who could possibly be sanding doors at 10:45 on a Friday night?".
I tried not to let it stress me and lowered myself into bed with my earplugs in. The noise had ceased. At 11pm it re-started. Now there were headlights not far from my house and an engine was revving outside.
• • •
I staggered outside in my PJs with the rest of the street, joining '6 guys and 3 women to help push the car and its smoking clutch up the hill. I live on a 16% hill. Mostly we were all there so we could get back to a peaceful nights sleep but secretly we were enjoying the team effort and camaraderie.
Unfortunately it didn't last long. It was an insight into another world. While I felt like 8 steps pushing a ton of metal was pretty good going and repeatable often enough to get the car out of its position as a road-block, no-one else agreed and someone in a long parking space eventually vacated a spot she could just roll the car into.
• • •
We had our peace back. I went to bed again at 1145, exhilarated and wide awake and stared at the dark walls.
An age later I was awake again and hungry and exhausted. I considered taking my bike and bivi gear out instead but the fatigue, prospect of cold and discomfort prevented me from doing so. I didn't feel any urge to push any limits I felt like I need a break from them so I turned the light on. It was only 12:28. I had slept less than 30 minutes.
The thing is, I really want a bike ride - an enjoyable one. Bivi or no bivi, I just don't want it to be an unmitigated disaster.
Eventually I realised I was hungry. My night shift has led to some dodgy eating patterns too so I got up again and ate cereal with my painful teeth and wrote this blog in an effort to stay sane and make sense of it all.
The street is quiet again. My brain is quiet again. My hot water bottle is bringing me comfort, not making me feel like its a lead chain confining me to my bed. The thought crossed my mind: I can't go out it will be a waste of hot water. The truth is, I want to plan to go out - do it in an organised fashion and let it breathe life into me, not dread.
I might not make it up for dawn but tomorrow is definitely a new dawn.
• • •
Follow up. The dawn came as late as I would allow it and through the ongoing fatigue, somehow I ended up spending hours window-shopping online.
I
was the shopkeepers worst nightmare I filled a couple of baskets then
left the store, my purchases forever hanging in the ether - a gateway to
somewhere They will haunt my social media cookies for the rest of the
winter. There weren't any items I genuinely need and I suddenly
questioned my reasons for even wanting them except for justifying the
three hours I'd just spent looking choosing and sizing My credit card
went away and I made the best of a bad selection of clothes I'd laid out on the sofa so I didn't disturb TSK's sleep.
The fleecy leggings weren't the Rapha ones I expected but some old Endura ones where the pile fabric had turned lumpy and the pad had seen better days. I found better socks in the bottom of my gym bag. No bra, but there was one on the radiator that had dried out last night. Then I wandered around the house assembling various baselayers until I was wearing enough to stay warm.
I set out looking like a roadie but determined to ride the Cotic who hasn't been out since September.
I floated up the hill. Literally floated. It's been a while without decent suspension. My legs are stronger and were gasping for a ride and my low low gears made the hill we tried to shove a car up last night feel like a breeze, even compared to riding it on my road bike last weekend.
• • •
With relief my legs still turn pedals and gone are the searing shocks of saddle pain that followed the BB200. Infact the slightly harsher C17 Brooks saddle felt like nothing when switched onto the steel frame of the Cotic so there's another £ton not wasted. I burned along the road in the cool November misty sunshine on cloud 9.
As soon as I got off the lane I realised this first beautiful crisp November day of lockdown was going to be busy.
After giving way 4 times in 400m, I headed to the bottom of the valley and up the other side where it would be quieter.
• • •
The first steep climb that Mr Landslide named "Fairy Dell" warmed me up and I shed my layers like a lizard. Another mile along the lane I used my regular stop-and-faff trail to eat some M&Ms (Lunch 1.0) and adjust the floppy strap on the bag I'd just attached to the bike.
Something had been niggling me. The thought that the undergrowth was dying back. I've done a few rides this summer where I've noticed the undergrowth closing in on the path - but it didn't seem like many. Now it was all dying back. What did I do all summer?
The Adventure syndicate are doing Match the Miles this weekend. I thought back to "last years". How had I been so fit back then? I must have really slacked off this September! It took me a few minutes to realise match the miles was in May!. This year! As in 2020! It was but yesterday and decades ago, all at the same time.
It was safe to get back on the bike once I'd got that one sorted out.
• • •
I don't really remember struggling on the green lane although I had expected to. At least it was empty. As I turned the corner which heads straight up the contours I thought, "this is nice, nothing special". A roar of a fast car with a big exhaust startled me and then he was gone. Silence prevailed once more except for the patter and trickle of the stream next to me and my wheezy breathing and I realised that this ride... was everything special.
This was exactly the ride I needed and it gave me exactly the feelings I wanted. That life was breathing back in.
It far outstripped the anticipation of new kit and being a few hundred quid worse off.
• • •
At the top of the climb more unwelcome traffic buzzed left and right. I breathed again when I turned onto Bingley Lane past the veg garden where the gardener in her best yellow hi-vis coat and Nordic knitted hat weeded between root veg. My next off-road turn passed a couple of lads. One on a cheap MTB, the other a moped. An illicit, un-distanced rendez-vous? I said hello, they both said "Reyt" in unison.
I beamed. The young people spoke to me.
The Good Dog wasn't out today. He avoids petting during Lockdown. Lockdown is the only time I have passed the farm and not seen The Good Dog
• • •
Down the hill to the A57 full of motorists going to, or returning from, the Peak, for their daily exercise
It's fine though, I'm soon away from it and rumble along the Wyming brook trail, my cowbell jingling. A little dog that looks like an arctic fox seems right at home in the November air.
The only decision to be made out here is this: short direct single-track with steep hike-a-bike or top road with nice sweeping descent along the cliff. Whichever I choose I can do the other later.
I pick the easy option for now as I'm getting hungry. A couple of 1990s road bikes are locked up at the top carpark - sensible. Along the road people are queueing in cars to park and exercise up to Stanage Edge. Cyclists and runners jog and wheel smugly by.
When I arrive at the single track along the cliff top, my favourite spot is taken up by pic-nic-ers and just as I'm about to compliment them on their choice of spot, I notice they're also making their way through a bottle of Bollinger.
The whoopy descent is very satisfying. Sunshine, the Carbon bike and lightweight summer tyres always slip on the off-camber rubble leaving me praying for the sideways slide to fizzle out before momentum takes me off the edge of the path. The steel bike and winter tyres I successfully fitted last weekend stay planted right where I need them to be.
In the woods at the bottom of the hill my ride gains purpose as I cram 2 cans, a plastic bottle, crisp packet and a spent firework into my camelbak.
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| Jet pack? |
Further down I'm stopped in my tracks by a pop up "Apple stall" offering Rouge beauties 2 for £1 and tasty-looking flapjack.
Waiting for mother and son to pass, I considered splurging out. It's the kind of thing I would have done on a desperate day out. "Never look a gift horse in the mouth" is one of my bikepacking mantras. I realise I have missed the Gift Horse. Maybe tomorrow.
Up the final climb towards home. Everyone stops to one side to let me pass and I ride the whole thing smoothly. This is all the bike, not me. I'm puffing like Ivor the engine when I reach the road and in retrospect I'm 1 minute 18 slower than my fastest time. I zigzag back across the A57 into the quarry which is a hike a bike on the way up and on a bad day too, if you ride down it.
I
use the excuse of two student goths up-coming to get off and walk the
steepest of drop offs but midnight doesn't flinch at the rest of the
descent, despite me failing to clip in one foot and having a completely
disengaged moment going over a significant rock (that was a PB!). Crossing Hagg Hill, I
cheer on a couple of student roadies travelling at 90 degrees to me. Then they
turn left at the top and we're all heading the same way. Them on the
road above, me on my trail through the allotments.
I'm pleased to exit the gates at the other end as they ride past above me. Big bike, fat tyres, still got it
I dropped into my road and the soft comforting womb of my own home ready for a 3pm salad lunch but even more ready for a change into tracky bottoms.
All kinds of things have drifted through my head today, none of them work related. This goes a long way to explaining how exercise helps the brain to rest even when the body is becoming fatigued. When things are difficult in life, pure rest can allow the worries in, during the day as well as at 2am. Whereas physical activity gives the brain chance to breathe literally and metaphorically.
I had every intention of going out again yesterday evening for my November bivi but it didn't happen. The luxury of my daytime ride was I found all the things that have been a little bit off with my ride - the dropper post cable that I couldn't quite fix on my way to the BB WRT, charging my lights for the first time since Scotland. After bike maintenance, the comfort of home took over and instead I watched the Vuelta on the tele and fell into bed with TSK - our last nightshift weekend before he gets to become a human again next week.
Everyone is looking forward to that.
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