Surrey Riding

The kind of evening where you toy with the idea of shorts but stick to 3/4 lengths because it will get cold later.

Planning the kind of ride where there is a later.

I drop off the hog's back hill towards the South Downs way and enjoy sandy trails until it's time to turn South again and head for the road crossing I have imagined at the A3.

A lady dressed in a flat cap and jodhpurs smiles at me.  She's a little older than me and weather worn and I feel like telling her she looks nice because in spite of her lady-of-the-manor dress and wrinkles,  she carries it well and does look friendly.

She paases me back in a transit van, still smiling as I realise that maybe she's just amused by the enormity of my plan to cross the hog's back road.

I find my descent route then wait around 5 minutes in total to leg it across 2x2 lanes of traffic moving at 70mph

A short,  sneaky footpath sees me doing the same on the A31 a few minutes later. This time the central reservation is not a grassy median but a narrow strip of armaco barriers and I sit with my butt perched and EmVee standing precariously on the struts designed to buckle under the force of a crashing vehicle.

I don't like crossing in front of trucks but it is likely to be 10 minutes before I get another chance so I heft EmVee on to my shoulder and skitter across the road in my cycling shoes. It's a long 300 yards to the slip road to my tiny back-lane turn where I see a lady on her commute home and I wonder how she does this road every day,  or what she knows that I don't.

For the rest of the ride I am on trail and beautiful countryside roads which aren't even used by cars, except by the occasional resident. I suppose I have the efficient and behemoth A3 to thank for that.

The bridle paths are beautiful but unremarkable in the level of challenge they offer, except for one descent. I reach a turn after a long climb. At the top a man is sitting on a fallen tree, staring into the tree canopy above.  I ask if he's looking at anything interesting,  hoping for a woodpecker or an owl but he simply replies,  "isn't it a beautiful evening" and I agree,  setting off down the best single track of the evening, a ditch so steep-sided that my bars almost touch the sides and enough bumps for me to learn that I can put more air back in the forks. It snakes through woodland and I am so glad of the Garmin nav because it means I can enjoy my descent until the point where I make my turn to start heading home.

I am riding home on bridle paths through parks on the edge of Hampton Court yet there isn't a person in sight.

I am slightly worried by a caravan and land rover parked up in the middle of nowhere. A bit of me is vigilant for murderers and rapists and a bit of me is wondering if it is a national trust land rover (to explain away the rapist theory).

The sound of something crashing through the undergrowth heightens my alerts.  Now it's either a big,  slobbering dog... or a rapist.  To my relief and wonder it is two deer who I have separated,  one each side of the path.  They both stand taller than I, their beautiful feminine faces and big, brown vigilant eyes watching me as I roll by, hoping that one does not try to join the other in a mountain biker death-leap of glory.

 I am getting tired now so I wind along the easiest trail I can and pop back out onto country lanes. My lights go on and I start to be glad my knees are covered and disappointed in my choice of socks.  The sun has disappeared behind the hill already but there's the remnants of a pink stain on clouds in the sky. My day is not over with work still to do but the day has definitely been 'done' to an acceptable level of detail.

An hour early for a meeting at work on Monday and a day early with my costing today. Something is wrong!

Sun Salutations in the setting Sun

A run in the Malverns on Monday on my way home from site.

Since then I have been working until 9:30 pm every night and waking up around midnight in a panic.  Oh well.  Zen can't be every day.

Sun Salutations in the Rain

Yoga today followed by a 4km run with a workmates who made me run faster cos I didn't want to slow him down too much.

worky wirk work

Rest day from training today but a bloody productive day on site with a lovely drive home from Hazel Grove.

Wish I felt a bit more recovered.

One step closer

Today I rode to yoga on my way to work. What a great way to start the day.

Yoga was tough and my afternoon was mostly lost daydreaming of what lies ahead. I am finding an exciting project pretty unexciting at the moment because it's difficult for simple reasons. It won't fit. I don't know whether to mess with it and make it fit or give in and say, it won't go here,  give me another place.

I have come home to simple chores. Some pleasant ones.

I am trying to be calmly happy with my lot.

Back... Done

Today I did another lunchtime easy run. This time 20 minutes. Double my previous distance.

Then I went swimming after work and discovered a new swim technique that massively improved my speed. All I need to do now is:

• remember it,
• Practice it
• Maintain it

Shouted at a boy who nearly punched me in the head while racing his mate.

Now I am very tired and going to bed happy. Yoga tomorrow.