Been grounded this weekend, and a bank holiday weekend too. Friday night cycling home from work I got a cramp in my left calf, fairly near to home. But I didn't stop and stretch. The area I was cycling through is frankly scary and admitting vulnerability didnt' really seem like the best idea in the world so I kept going until I felt a little less exposed. Leg kept feeling crampy all evening and was joined by shin pain and cramp in toes for a bit. Saturday it felt OK during the day but Saturday night in bed the bloody leg was agony. Kept off the bike Sunday, kept off the bike Monday and prudence is keeping me off the bike tomorrow.
Using the downtime, I have completed an application form for Sustrans to become a volunteer ranger near me.
support-sustrans/volunteer-rangers
I'm very very excited about this. Looking forward to taking on a personal responsibility for the cycle path near to me. If they accept me of course. It would be good to have the authority / permission to actually do something physical about sorting out some of the problems I see. Way better than simply complaining. Start with sorting out over grown bits and pieces, and maybe one day move on to campaigning for bigger and better improvements. Such as the two Cyclists Dismount signs on the bike route near to me. They bug me.
Monday, 30 May 2011
Saturday, 28 May 2011
Stay Safe
The cry of cyclists to each other following another cycling fatality on the roads is Stay Safe. And we try. An erstwhile work colleague of mine died on Thursday while riding home with a friend on their bikes. The jungle drums have it that he was hit from behind by a car with a teenage driver.
Friday was a day in shock for the office. Rob was my age and leaves a wife and child. He was one of nature's good guys, time for everyone. He was a very experienced cyclist, one that taught others how to do it safely and well, and definitely not on for a testosterone rush. The rumour has it the car didn't see him. Rob was over 6 foot and did not run to leanness. Hard to miss in the office, why so hard to miss on the road.
It's frightening to less skilful riders like myself to realise that someone who would be reasonably described as one of the safest guys on the road could die, just like that, on the scene. It would presumably take some shunt to kill a giant like Rob on the spot. He always seemed solid.
If I hadn't cycled to work Friday when the news broke and therefore had limited choices about getting on the bike home it's highly probable I'd be thinking more than just twice about commuting on the bike again. If it could happen to Rob then surely it's more than likely to happen to me. So, stay safe out there people, stay safe.
Friday was a day in shock for the office. Rob was my age and leaves a wife and child. He was one of nature's good guys, time for everyone. He was a very experienced cyclist, one that taught others how to do it safely and well, and definitely not on for a testosterone rush. The rumour has it the car didn't see him. Rob was over 6 foot and did not run to leanness. Hard to miss in the office, why so hard to miss on the road.
It's frightening to less skilful riders like myself to realise that someone who would be reasonably described as one of the safest guys on the road could die, just like that, on the scene. It would presumably take some shunt to kill a giant like Rob on the spot. He always seemed solid.
If I hadn't cycled to work Friday when the news broke and therefore had limited choices about getting on the bike home it's highly probable I'd be thinking more than just twice about commuting on the bike again. If it could happen to Rob then surely it's more than likely to happen to me. So, stay safe out there people, stay safe.
Friday, 27 May 2011
Fuelling strategy
Bearing in mind my attempts to keep weight under control; at the very least to maintain the kilos I'm at, and preferably continue to make a safe and gradual progression towards a slimmer more svelte Alison, I reckon I'm fairly functional at fuelling. My commuter ride to work is always done on an empty stomach; exercise at early hours makes my stomach feel rough whatever I do, and experience has taught me empty is better than full, and even then every now and then I get stomach cramps on the way to work.
Any other ride though I take a more considered approach to energy levels. Breakfast is fibre and carbohydrate and not protein and fat, and it is a greater quantity than I might for a sedentary day - you've got to be prepared. I'm also really good at eating on the trail, chewy bars being a bit of a staple diet, but only a couple of mouthfuls at a time, just enough to keep me ticking over. Lunch on the trail is also spread out into a little and often. I know a couple of rolls is going to be about right but wouldn't eat them both at the same time, just keep the input regular and try my best to keep blood sugar levels constant through the day.
It's just kind of great to have the confidence to know I'm not going to hit a wall, and eating isn't going to make me blow up like a balloon.
Any other ride though I take a more considered approach to energy levels. Breakfast is fibre and carbohydrate and not protein and fat, and it is a greater quantity than I might for a sedentary day - you've got to be prepared. I'm also really good at eating on the trail, chewy bars being a bit of a staple diet, but only a couple of mouthfuls at a time, just enough to keep me ticking over. Lunch on the trail is also spread out into a little and often. I know a couple of rolls is going to be about right but wouldn't eat them both at the same time, just keep the input regular and try my best to keep blood sugar levels constant through the day.
It's just kind of great to have the confidence to know I'm not going to hit a wall, and eating isn't going to make me blow up like a balloon.
Thursday, 26 May 2011
Down sizing
Now it's clear to me I'm wired differently from some folk and what works for me is just plain bonkers to a lot of other people. A year ago I came off anti-depressants and cut myself some slack with regards to things such as weight gain, telling myself if that's what it was going to take to get myself through that period of adjustment then so be it and I would deal with any subsequent weight increase ... later. At an unnamed moment in the future.
At the end of last year / early this year; I can't be sure, the time had come to deal with the weight increase. It had not been substantial but was certainly enough to affect my morale going forwards. The bike, or in particular the spinning classes on the Watt bike have been a mainstay of weight loss, although these days the week day commuter bike rides are not about the body image, they are about getting fitter to enjoy my true love, the mountain bike.
It is worth reflecting though on how the period of weight loss has gone. My method was simplicity itself. Move more, eat less. Nothing fancy about that at all as far as physiology goes. Things I've realised it really took were
1. Change. Acknowledgment that for the situation to change I had to make changes, and this isn't make a change then trundle on back to usual with the change having been a one off, one day of doing exercise or one day of eating more, this needed to be a hard earned, sustained change over a longer period. I had to accept that just thinking I was on a diet was not the same as eating less.
2. Do what you need to do, not what you want to do. I have a tendency to get home from work, tell myself I'm tired, tell myself it's raining or cold or that I simply don't want to do anything other than get tea, sit on the settee then have a bath and go to bed. What I want doesn't necessarily make me happy either; what I want can leave me sat there, bored and lonely. What I need is to walk to the library, to go to the allotment, to do a short bike ride, to do something, get out there, be productive or at least energetic.
3. Make only really small changes, and make them stick, then make some more small changes and make them stick too, then some other small changes. Building up all the little changes over time since the start of this year now sees me eating breakfast every day, and a reasonably nutritious one at that. No snacking happens in the morning now, I'm full until lunchtime. I have learned to really enjoy enormous quantities of salad in wraps or sandwiches or just as part of a main meal. Beginning to do more exercise built up and up until I was doing 7 hours a week minimum by April. I have a four o'clock snack at work, and often it's an apple. I don't drink alcohol on "school nights" any more and not so much at weekends. Lots of little changes really add up.
And let's not forget the bike in all this. 100 hours is a normal month, from January onwards, and the plan is to double that by the end of summer. The bike is not an instrument of torture and it certainly doesn't feel like the kind of exercise you do because you feel you have to, the weekends of mountain biking are a joy and not a chore, and there's a lot to be said for that.
At the end of last year / early this year; I can't be sure, the time had come to deal with the weight increase. It had not been substantial but was certainly enough to affect my morale going forwards. The bike, or in particular the spinning classes on the Watt bike have been a mainstay of weight loss, although these days the week day commuter bike rides are not about the body image, they are about getting fitter to enjoy my true love, the mountain bike.
It is worth reflecting though on how the period of weight loss has gone. My method was simplicity itself. Move more, eat less. Nothing fancy about that at all as far as physiology goes. Things I've realised it really took were
1. Change. Acknowledgment that for the situation to change I had to make changes, and this isn't make a change then trundle on back to usual with the change having been a one off, one day of doing exercise or one day of eating more, this needed to be a hard earned, sustained change over a longer period. I had to accept that just thinking I was on a diet was not the same as eating less.
2. Do what you need to do, not what you want to do. I have a tendency to get home from work, tell myself I'm tired, tell myself it's raining or cold or that I simply don't want to do anything other than get tea, sit on the settee then have a bath and go to bed. What I want doesn't necessarily make me happy either; what I want can leave me sat there, bored and lonely. What I need is to walk to the library, to go to the allotment, to do a short bike ride, to do something, get out there, be productive or at least energetic.
3. Make only really small changes, and make them stick, then make some more small changes and make them stick too, then some other small changes. Building up all the little changes over time since the start of this year now sees me eating breakfast every day, and a reasonably nutritious one at that. No snacking happens in the morning now, I'm full until lunchtime. I have learned to really enjoy enormous quantities of salad in wraps or sandwiches or just as part of a main meal. Beginning to do more exercise built up and up until I was doing 7 hours a week minimum by April. I have a four o'clock snack at work, and often it's an apple. I don't drink alcohol on "school nights" any more and not so much at weekends. Lots of little changes really add up.
And let's not forget the bike in all this. 100 hours is a normal month, from January onwards, and the plan is to double that by the end of summer. The bike is not an instrument of torture and it certainly doesn't feel like the kind of exercise you do because you feel you have to, the weekends of mountain biking are a joy and not a chore, and there's a lot to be said for that.
Being brave
Do something each day that scares you, they say. Whoever they might be. Generally I laugh scornfully at such a statement and respond "what, just one thing?". So I am very much aware of my tendencies to be a wuss. It's been really really windy recently.
This simply won't do said the nasty parent state inside me (Berne's transactional analysis model has a lot to answer for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_analysis). So after much internal wrangling on Tuesday night I got the bike out, just to see what it felt like to be a little out of control and at risk of wind blown diversions from the straight and narrow. Just a short trip, a killing two birds with one stone thing (there we go, another of those common phrases), by doing the two mile trip to the allotment on the bike. Wanting the trip to be a success, I dressed with care, even donning the winter bike tights (it's nearly June for pity's sake), and a windproof softshell. And it was fine. Turns out the commuter bike is built like a tank and it would take one hell of a wind to blow something that weight off track. Job done.
So, Wednesday did see me back on the bike again on the work commute, possibly over dressed for the time of year, but I got out there, and I did it, and nobody died.
This simply won't do said the nasty parent state inside me (Berne's transactional analysis model has a lot to answer for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactional_analysis). So after much internal wrangling on Tuesday night I got the bike out, just to see what it felt like to be a little out of control and at risk of wind blown diversions from the straight and narrow. Just a short trip, a killing two birds with one stone thing (there we go, another of those common phrases), by doing the two mile trip to the allotment on the bike. Wanting the trip to be a success, I dressed with care, even donning the winter bike tights (it's nearly June for pity's sake), and a windproof softshell. And it was fine. Turns out the commuter bike is built like a tank and it would take one hell of a wind to blow something that weight off track. Job done.
So, Wednesday did see me back on the bike again on the work commute, possibly over dressed for the time of year, but I got out there, and I did it, and nobody died.
Wednesday, 25 May 2011
Girls Talk
Is cycling a feminist issue I wonder. Mulling over in my over crowded head space some girly issues associated with the bicycle.
Current musing is as a result of a few things - reading an article in the Guardian and reading a snippet or two about Cycletta, and following a clicky link or two. For convenience, the thought provoking stuff here:
http://www.101wankers.com/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/women-only-cycling-events
http://www.cycletta.co.uk/
There is a lot I don't understand. I don't understand the woman writing the 101wankers site, where she describes incidents where men have shouted stuff at her or taken other unusual actions while she's on the bike. Not wanting to follow the recent Ken Clarke comments regarding rape ... I really don't get why she's experiencing these problems, and wonder indeed if it's something she herself is doing, drawing attention to herself in some negative fashion. I just don't understand because it's something that's never been a teeny weeny part of my cycling experience, and I'm chalking up around 100 miles a month on average so far this year so have reasonable potential exposure to all kinds of situations, city centre cars & pedestrians, drunks etc. I really am putting myself out there.
I also don't understand Cycletta. I don't know if it's competitive, participation, political lobbying, I don't really understand the purpose. My experience of mass events attended by women is restricted to the Race for Life events, and I know it's not a social opportunity; you're never going to find a potential riding partner for future in a mass of other people intent on riding their bikes. I'm a little scared if it is like Race for Life that it'll be totally impossible to make progress, being held behind dawdling participators and forced into an uncomfortable position of over crowding which my bike handling skills are not up to. If it's more competitive then I'd also be in the wrong place, not owning a suitable bike for such occasions and definitely not having bunch skills. Added to that I'd be too slow. If it's political then I'd never take part without a clear understanding of what the aim is and what it's standing up for. Oh, and it's £35 to go out for a bike ride. That's just stupid.
For me, cycling fulfils maybe three entirely separate needs. It can be for fitness when I go out on my own, keeping my own pace and my own company and having complete freedom to do my own thing. It can be to get from A to B, again at my own pace in my own company and with the option of going for fitness as well as simply making the distance pass as quickly as I reasonably can. The third need is the one I use it least often for, to fulfil a social need. Going out with friends on a ride is social not for fitness as you can't really do everything you can on your own in a group, there are other restrictions and you need to focus on the social element or come away from the ride disappointed. Whichever need, I can be sure Cycletta fulfils none of them.
I am being drawn towards the somewhat disconcerting conclusion that I'm not representative of women.
Current musing is as a result of a few things - reading an article in the Guardian and reading a snippet or two about Cycletta, and following a clicky link or two. For convenience, the thought provoking stuff here:
http://www.101wankers.com/
http://www.guardian.co.uk/women-only-cycling-events
http://www.cycletta.co.uk/
There is a lot I don't understand. I don't understand the woman writing the 101wankers site, where she describes incidents where men have shouted stuff at her or taken other unusual actions while she's on the bike. Not wanting to follow the recent Ken Clarke comments regarding rape ... I really don't get why she's experiencing these problems, and wonder indeed if it's something she herself is doing, drawing attention to herself in some negative fashion. I just don't understand because it's something that's never been a teeny weeny part of my cycling experience, and I'm chalking up around 100 miles a month on average so far this year so have reasonable potential exposure to all kinds of situations, city centre cars & pedestrians, drunks etc. I really am putting myself out there.
I also don't understand Cycletta. I don't know if it's competitive, participation, political lobbying, I don't really understand the purpose. My experience of mass events attended by women is restricted to the Race for Life events, and I know it's not a social opportunity; you're never going to find a potential riding partner for future in a mass of other people intent on riding their bikes. I'm a little scared if it is like Race for Life that it'll be totally impossible to make progress, being held behind dawdling participators and forced into an uncomfortable position of over crowding which my bike handling skills are not up to. If it's more competitive then I'd also be in the wrong place, not owning a suitable bike for such occasions and definitely not having bunch skills. Added to that I'd be too slow. If it's political then I'd never take part without a clear understanding of what the aim is and what it's standing up for. Oh, and it's £35 to go out for a bike ride. That's just stupid.
For me, cycling fulfils maybe three entirely separate needs. It can be for fitness when I go out on my own, keeping my own pace and my own company and having complete freedom to do my own thing. It can be to get from A to B, again at my own pace in my own company and with the option of going for fitness as well as simply making the distance pass as quickly as I reasonably can. The third need is the one I use it least often for, to fulfil a social need. Going out with friends on a ride is social not for fitness as you can't really do everything you can on your own in a group, there are other restrictions and you need to focus on the social element or come away from the ride disappointed. Whichever need, I can be sure Cycletta fulfils none of them.
I am being drawn towards the somewhat disconcerting conclusion that I'm not representative of women.
Tuesday, 24 May 2011
Dorothy flight
Once again I'm being a feardy cat. I have mental pictures of the gale force winds lifting me up as per Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. This picture has not been enhanced by reading people's twitter entries suggesting they are being physically lifted from their bikes and dumped on the road. It's not pretty out there.
I am a wuss when it comes to weather. It takes a lot to get me out on the bike in a) rain, b) wind, c) darkess, d) weather that looks like it might produce any of the previous 3 possibilities. No matter how many times I tell myself I won't dissolve, it doesn't help. No matter how much I prepare myself with bomb proof lights with long life batteries, it doesn't help. Telling myself I will get blown into the path of a passing lorry doesn't form the best mental preparation for the journey either. So I'm grounded.
Added to my weather woes, I have committed a guilty unfaithful act, and done 5 days kayaking in the last week. My shoulder is so sore I can't use the mouse with my right arm, and in fact typing is causing some slight twinges. Wonder how much the bike riding would be affected ...
Grounded.
I am a wuss when it comes to weather. It takes a lot to get me out on the bike in a) rain, b) wind, c) darkess, d) weather that looks like it might produce any of the previous 3 possibilities. No matter how many times I tell myself I won't dissolve, it doesn't help. No matter how much I prepare myself with bomb proof lights with long life batteries, it doesn't help. Telling myself I will get blown into the path of a passing lorry doesn't form the best mental preparation for the journey either. So I'm grounded.
Added to my weather woes, I have committed a guilty unfaithful act, and done 5 days kayaking in the last week. My shoulder is so sore I can't use the mouse with my right arm, and in fact typing is causing some slight twinges. Wonder how much the bike riding would be affected ...
Grounded.
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