This morning I was stuck with ideas of what form of exercise to do. You see after skipping yesterday my calf muscles were that tight that if I pulled my toes up I felt like the calf muscle would snap and if I point my toes I received instant cramp.
I decided on digging out the old bike and doing a three mile cycle (only 3 miles as there are lots of hills and I am not a cyclist by any stretch of anyones imagination and I'm already in pain. I didn't want sore buttocks too).What I didn't realise was that over Christmas my bike had turned into the bike of doom!
I dug the bike out, gave it a quick rub down to get the dust off, inflated the semi-flat tyres and set my stop watch (don't know why I did this, not like I'm going to break any records). Off I set. I decided to tackle the very steep hill first to get it out of the way. Doing the route in reverse would mean a slow long hill the other way and I didn't fancy that for the first time on my bike in many many months. Short and sharp sounded better. Just as I approached the top of the hill there came a strange annoying bumble bee sound from my rear tyre. So off I hopped for the first time to investigate. At first I couldn't see anything. The brakes were aligned okay so on I popped again. Alas the noise was still there. So off I hopped again. It appeared that whilst I had got my gears serviced at the beginning of winter, my rear wheel had not been put back correctly and so was rubbing ever so slightly on the frame of the bike. I had a choice. Either go back, sort the wheel and try again (this could potentially take hours for me to achieve and would result in no exercise) or continue on my way sounding like a distressed blue bottle. I opted to continue. Well if I didn't put the buttocks too far back the noise wasn't that bad. So off I toddled on my way....buzz buzz buzz. Apart from the noise everything seemed okay. The gears were pants (note to self....find somewhere else to get bike serviced!) but the first two miles went not too bad. The last mile is the really hilly section. So after free wheeling and not moving for a metre or so, finally I found a gear and tackled the first incline buzz buzz buzz. At the top finally thought I could get some speed up ready for the second incline. CLONK! chain fell off. So for the third time I hopped off the bike, sorted the chain and got on again. Wee down the hill but after spending numerous seconds trying to find a gear again lost all momentum for the next incline and hence had to slog my way back up. At the top of the next hill thought I'd have one more bash at getting speed up ready for the final hill. Bike said NO! Chain off again. Off I got yet again, sorted chain, on I got again, pushed off to go, chain off again AAAHHHHH. Pattern forming here. Decision, throw bike over hedge and walk home or laugh (don't know what passing motorists thought at me laughing at the side of the road). Chain back on. Third attempt. Well I decided not to bother trying to change gears this time so off I set down the last hill doing 1900 rpm to gather speed but alas didn't get to use the speed to get up the hill as needed to break to get round the 90 degree corner.
Home as last but you can't say I didn't have a work out!!!
3 miles in 22 mins (including hopping on and off countless times and fixing chain).
Think I'll try something else next time xxx
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