Category: Cycling

I had big plans to be a hardcore double-Janathoner today. I was going to go to the gym in the morning, then to a running club in the evening but when I went to get dressed, I felt really bleurgh, so I thought I’d see how I felt after lunch but after lunch I felt even more bleurgh so cancelled going to the running club but then thought I should at least do a short bike ride and so I got on my bike but after 0.22 miles, felt sick and cold and so turned round and came back.

Ho hum.

Stats (cycling)
Distance: 0.43 miles
Time: 3:28
Speed: 7.5mph
Calories:14
Hardcore Janathoners: 0

I had planned to go swimming today, as with my gym membership, I can use the pool in the posh(er) gym in town for free. Gym and swim for £20 a month, bargain. But I haven’t used my bargainous membership at the swimming pool yet because I haven’t been swimming since I was about 14 and don’t know if I can still swim and even if I can, I don’t know how to use a swimming pool. I remember there’s a little pool of water you have to walk through first but I can’t remember changing rooms and lockers and things and I’ll have to ask where they are and how to use them and I don’t like asking things as my confident days are few and far between but I’d been having a good week and was feeling good and so I thought I’d be brave and go swimming, then get something to eat in town after but this morning I got up late and the weather was minging and so I decided not to go into town and I decided I wasn’t going to bother with Janathon at all today as I wasn’t in the mood but then I thought I suppose I’d better do something and so I decided to go on a little bike ride and I cycled down the road and my hands were cold as I’d forgotten to put on my gloves and I couldn’t see as I’d forgotten to put on my glasses and I did a puny 1.77 miles but it’s better than nothing and it all counts.

Stats (cycling)
Distance: 1.77 miles
Time: 11:48
Speed: 9mph
Calories: 50
Free swimming pools: 1
Free swimming pools went to today: 0
Puny bike rides that are better than nothing: 1

As I had my yearly hair cut the other day, now I need to give my hair it’s yearly dye but first I must Janathon and so I get dressed in a purple long sleeve top and a purple hoody and I get my purple bike out of the garage and do a measly three miles and see a very squished hedgehog and then I get back and dye my hair purple and when I realise it’s been a bit of a purple day, it reminds me of a conversation I had about 15 years ago with my friend Lorraine who said if I like purple that means I’ve got delusions of grandeur and I replied that they weren’t delusions.

Stats (cycling)
Distance: 3.27 miles
Time: 20:29
Speed: 100
Purple long sleeve tops: 1
Purple hoodies: 1
Purple bikes: 1
Squished hedgehogs: 1
Purple heads of hair: 1
Delusions of grandeur: 1

Up late again, due to spending all night watching The Apprentice, The Goodies and The Day John Lennon Died (I was going to watch To Kill A Mockingbird that I had recorded, but it had the little deaf dude in the corner and it was distracting me) and so I get up around lunchtime and go to the supermarket and when I get back I make some hot chocolate and I think oh no, I’ve forgotten about Janathon and it’s going to be dark by the time I go out and when I get round to going out I put on my hi-vis jacket and get my purple bike that has lights on out of the garage and I go down the road and then remember that country lanes don’t have streetlights and I’ve only ever cycled back from town before where it’s light and it’s pitch black and I can only see about two feet ahead of me and it’s quite scary and whenever a car comes in the opposite direction their headlights are so bright I can’t see anything at all and that’s not quite scary, it’s fucking well scary, and I get back to the main road and there still aren’t any streetlights and I think why the hell aren’t there any lights on the main road and I get back after cycling 5.5 miles in the dark.

Stats (cycling)
Distance: 5.5 miles
Time: 34:10
Speed: 9.7mph
Calories: 171
Deaf dudes: 1
Hot chocolates: 1
Streetlights: 0

Today my Janathon plans were thwarted. Not by any insomnia as I actually got to sleep last night pretty soon after closing my eyes, therefore a) allowing me to get some much needed sleep; and b) sparing you any more iambic pentameter.

No, my plans were thwarted by waiting in for a delivery of shed building stuff that never arrived and the need to go into town to run some errands and get the halfway-down-my-back-ratstails cut off.

I get my pretty pink bike with its wicker basket out of the garage and head off to my first stop which is the Post Office to send off a parcel which was wrapped up – in the absence of any brown paper – in two inside-out Debenhams carrier bags  and then carrying on into town to go to the bank to pay in a couple of cheques and then venturing tentatively into the cheapy cheapy no-appointment-necessary hairdressers that is Supercuts.

I walk in and there’s a line of chavs on chairs, obviously waiting to get their Croydon facelifts trimmed. I go up to the reception desk and wait for the chavvy looking girl to stop blethering on to the chav whose hair she’s cutting and she eventually comes over and I say I’d like a cut and blow dry please and she says it’ll be over an hour and I say shall I come back in an hour then? and she says well, if someone comes in before you, they’ll take priority and so I say ok then, I’ll come back in an hour and see how you’re doing and I leave Superchavs and decide to go and see if Toni & Guy can fit me in and I go to Toni & Guy and look at the prices on their window and it says £41 and I think £41, yikes but it also says offers available, please ask inside and so I go in and there aren’t any chavs in there and I think that’s a good sign and I ask the non-chav at the reception desk if I can be fitted in and she says yes, in an hour and I say great, I’ll be back then and oh, how much is it? and she says £41 and I say do you have any offers? the sign in your window says you have offers and she says oh yes, we’re doing a 25% discount, you can have that, so it’ll be £31 and I say great, but really in my head I’m thinking you only offered me the discount because I asked, cheek, but I really want to get my hair cut today because I only get my hair cut about once a year when I’m really really really really fed up with it and that time has come and I’M NOT GOING HOME UNTIL I’VE HAD MY HAIR CUT and so I go and get a cup of raspberry tea in Caffe Nero and spend my hour Tweeting and then I go back to Toni & Guy and get my hair cut and I no longer have half-way-down-my-back-ratstails, but a shorter shoulder-length cut

and I think yay, no more hairdresser trips for another year and then I get on my bike and as I’m going down the road a young hoodie type shouts out OH MY GOD, THAT BIKE IS SO GAY and I think yes, my bike is very happy, that’s very observant of you young man but then I think hang on, maybe he’s not using the word gay in its original meaning but in its homosexual meaning and I think MY BIKE IS NOT A HOMOSEXUAL but even if it was, I would still love it as much as I love my other bikes and I think the young man needs to learn the difference between a gay person and a bicycle.

Stats (cycling)
Distance: 4.91 miles
Time: 34:44
Speed: 8.5mph
Calories: 149
Deliveries turning up: 0
Post Offices: 1
Banks: 1
Haircuts in Superchavs: 0
Haircuts in Toni & Guys: 1
Gay bikes: 0

Another sleepless night. I spent it trying to get Janathon out of my head by thinking up iambic pentameter but this didn’t really work, as the first one I came up with was

The Janathon is keeping me awake

but by 3.30am I hadn’t come up with anything better than

or maybe it was the biscuits I ate

and therefore bored myself to sleep and now I’m wondering if iambic pentameter is the new sheep.

After eventually getting to sleep and dreaming about bright white dogs with bright blue eyes and no noses, I get up about 10:30 and I had planned to Janathon at the gym today but on looking out the window and seeing sunshine and bright blue skies, decide to go for a run but then I decide to go for a bike ride instead.

A few months ago, I was offered the chance to ask Haile Gebrselassie a question* ahead of his New York Marathon on November 7^th where he would be wearing an exclusive pair of Adidas Adizero Adios featuring the times for all of his 26 World Records.

In return for my question, I was going to receive exclusive footage of my Q&A along with a pair of Adidas Adizero Adios World Record Breaking shoes, which are only available to buy at the NY Marathon booth. Yay!

Apparently there were communication problems between here and Ethiopia, so I didn’t get the footage of my Q&A, but this morning the postman delivered my shoes

and I wonder what to do with them as they’re too light for me to run in and I’d get laughed at them down at the gym and so I decide to wear them for my bike ride as at least then I’ll be visible; well, my feet will, anyway. I put them on and blimey, they’re comfortable. They’re as comfy as my most comfy Asics, but I suppose world record breakers need comfy shoes don’t they? After all, if Paula Radcliffe doesn’t stop for a poo, Haile’s not going to want to stop to put a Compeed on his little toe, is he?

After putting on my new comfy world record breaking shoes, I go to the garage to get my bike. I have three bikes: a pink one, a white one and a purple one and after deciding which colour bike to ride (purple), I get on my way. While I’m cycling along, I’m thinking about my purple bike which I have fallen off many times while cycling home drunk after a night out and it’s been subjected various times to the chain coming off, the brakes snapping, gears breaking, wheels bent and plenty of bumps and marks, while I’ve escaped with not a scratch but the one time I fall off while sober, my (pink) bike ends up without a scratch, while I end up with a badly grazed left knee, a badly bruised right knee and a thumb I can’t bend for a week, and I come to the conclusion that either drunks can bounce or I should stick to the purple bike.

Stats
Distance: 11.45 miles
Time: 1:15:57
Speed: 9mph
Calories: 332
Sleepless nights: 1
Lines of iambic pentameter: 2
Sheep: 0
Pairs of world breaking shoes: 1

*You want to know what my question is, don’t you? I’m ashamed to say I couldn’t think of one, so asked Twitter for  help. Gene at Accountability came up with ‘Do you have a mantra you chant to keep your cadence?’  (That’s not verbatim, as I can’t remember exactly what it was… sorry…), which I thought was a splendid question and much better than one I’d have asked, which would probably have been something like ‘what’s your favourite Square Crisps flavour?’ Thanks Gene!

I wonder how many blog posts will have that as their title before Janathon is over?

Anyway, in case anyone noticed my absence yesterday, I suppose I’d better confess that the Christmas excess caught up with me and I spent the day in bed and didn’t get up ‘til 6pm, then went back to bed at 1am, then didn’t get up ‘til lunchtime today. Which leaves a bit of a gap where the Janathon day 2 blog post should be.

Oops.

I wasn’t exactly feeling great when I got up today either, with my energy levels being a bit depleted due to my consumption over the last three days only consisting of a mince pie, two Cream Crackers with chilli jam and Stilton, some Chilli & Cheese Pringles, a couple of Belgian chocolate biscuits and a few pieces of pasta with tomato sauce. Not really enough for a finely tuned athlete, eh? but along with my energy, my appetite has also decreased so I thought maybe if I did some exercise my appetite would come back, so off out on my bike it was.

I haven’t been out on my bike much over the last few weeks as, just before Christmas, on the way back from doing some Christmas shopping, I came off my bike and did this

to my knee, which left me feeling a bit sore and achy for a week or so, and put me off cycling, although there was so much snow and ice everywhere, that I couldn’t cycle anywhere anyway, had I wanted to.

But I thought I could probably manage three miles today and so off I went and started to enjoy being out and so when I got to the crossroads, I decided to carry on going straight, instead of turning left; a decision probably not appreciated by the woman who nearly drove into me from the left, causing me to nearly crash into the woman coming down the road in front. I did wonder if this was a sign that me and cycling aren’t really compatible and maybe I should just go home, but I decided to be brave and carry on and ended up doing 9.3 miles.

A proper Janathon effort at last then. Only two days late. In the meantime, you’ve all been putting me to shame, and I’m loving reading the blogs and the comments in support.

Now I’m off to trawl through the backlog of 138 Janathon emails and add the latest victims participants.

Stats (cycling)
Distance: 9.3 miles
Time: 57:16
Speed: 9.7mph
Calories: 291
Janathons missed due to Christmas excess: 1
Women nearly running me over from the left: 1
Women nearly running me over from ahead: 1
Backlog of emails: 138