Category: Cycling

I slacked yesterday, I’m not doing very well with this Juneathon thing but I was just soooooooooooooooooooooo tired, I could hardly keep my eyes open and I didn’t go to the running club either, oops.  But as today was nice and sunny, I thought I’d take the Pashley out for a few miles, stopping off at the deli on the way round.  I spend what seems like about three weeks gathering together my camera, phone and money and my camera switches itself on and there’s a photo of a baby on there and I think WHAT THE FUCK? why is there a picture of a baby on my camera? and I don’t recognise the baby and I think, well, I wouldn’t do, I don’t know any babies and then I think maybe Shaun borrowed my camera to take a photo of his secret lovechild and forgot to delete it and I think oh no, I’ll have to pack my bags and move back to London citing reasons of unfaithfulness and it’s our first anniversary today and everything and finding out he’s got a secret lovechild will put a bit of a downer on things, and then I decide Shaun hasn’t got a secret lovechild as he is as keen on babies as much as I am, which isn’t very much at all really and then I remember that it’s the camera I bought secondhand off eBay to replace the broken one and it must be the original owner’s baby and therefore nothing to do with secret lovechildren and I don’t have to pack my bags and go back to London citing reasons of unfaithfulness and I put the camera, phone and money in my waistbag then get my Garmin and lock and eventually get the bike out of the garage and then go back in for the key to the lock as that would help if I want to lock my bike which I do when I go into the shop as if anyone stole my bike I would cry and I put on my Garmin and my dorky hat that will hopefully stop my head from getting splattered all over the road if I fall off and I go round to where the cows are and I stop to take a photo and my camera says memory full and I think how can it be full, I haven’t taken any photos and so I delete the photo of the baby that probably isn’t Shaun’s secret lovechild and take a photo of the cows and I get back to the village and wonder where to lock my bike and there’s a bike against a lamp post but not locked and I think there’s no way I’m not locking my bike up but there’s nowhere for me to lock it to, so I just lean it against the wall and lock it and hope no one steals it and carries it away and I go into the deli and pick up what I want and I’m worried about my bike and the girl behind the counter is taking ages to serve the people in front of me and I don’t want my bike to get stolen and I get impatient and put back the stuff I wanted to buy and go back outside and my bike hasn’t been stolen and I unlock it and go back the long way round to go home and I get to the tree and decide to carry on and go further and I see a field full of little blue flowers and I get my camera out and it says memory full and I think how can it be full, I’ve only taken one picture of some cows and I wonder if it’s on the internal memory and not the memory card and I go through all the settings but can’t find a memory setting and so I go to take the memory card out so I can put it back in again and see if that fixes it and I open it and there’s no flipping memory card in there and I think ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh, I must have left it in my computer and then I think oh shit, I don’t remember putting it in Shaun’s computer so it must be in my computer that’s gone to the computer hospital and so that’s probably the last I’ve seen of that then and then I text Facebook to tell it what a fuckwit I am and then I think aha, I can take pictures on my phone and so I do but I haven’t got the software installed on this pc so I can’t upload them and then I get to where I usually turn right and Shaun said something about where turning left goes but I can’t remember what but I turn left anyway for a change and after a while I get to a busy main road and I wonder if it’s our road but I don’t really know and I think I don’t want to go down there in case it goes on for miles and miles and and there’s no pavement or anything and so I turn round and go back the way I came and I get to a turning and I wonder if I should turn off there or just keep going and I can’t remember which way I came and I go past a few houses I don’t remember seeing and I think I’ve gone the wrong way and just as I’m about to turn round and go back I realise I’m at the point where I turned off in the first place and I think shall I go home or shall I carry on and do my seven mile route? and I decide to carry on and do the seven mile route which is probably about five miles from here and I’ve already done 9 miles and as I’m going up a steep bit a cyclist overtakes me and I think show off and I spend the next four miles trying to catch him up and as I go over any bumps my bell keeps dinging and I hope he doesn’t think I’m dinging him and as we get back to the road, he turns left and I turn right and go home and I’ve done 15.5 miles which I think probably counts for Juneathon ok today.

Splits

Stats day 24 (cycling)
Distance: 15.51 miles
Time: 1:37:24
Speed: 9.6mph
Calories: 425
Secret lovechildren: 1
Memory cards I’ll probably never see again: 1
Cyclists overtaking me: 1
Cyclists reovertaken by me: 0
Juneathon’s completed: 21/30

Friday I did a quick 3.5 mile bike ride before going to meet a friend for lunch in London, then spent the afternoon doing touristy things like go on a boat trip down the Thames and take photos of the London Eye

and then I met up with another friend for drinks and dinner and then on Saturday I was too tired to Juneathon but on Sunday, after collecting my lovely pink Pashley Poppy

we did a 6.8 mile bike ride, taking in a visit to the llamas

and today I went out for 8.5 miles on the Pashley after my brand new pc from Dell was collected to be taken to the Dell hospital for repair as it’s got a fault on the hard drive and now I’m pc-less for two weeks which isn’t too bad as Shaun has kindly lent me his and if you’re wondering when I’m ever going to run again, I’m going to a running club tomorrow evening, hooray.

Stats day 19 (cycling)
Distance: 3.58 miles
Time: 24:37
Pace: 6:53 m/m

Stats day 21 (cycling)
Distance: 6.82 miles
Time: 47:42
Pace: 7:00 m/m

Stats day 22 (cycling)
Distance: 8.57 miles
Time: 47:12
Pace: 5:31 m/m

Juneathon’s completed: 20/30

Gary had stayed over on Thursday night so we could all go to the Download festival together.  Shaun got up early and went for a Juneathon run and I decided to just do two miles on the bike and asked Gary if he wanted to Juneathon with me.  He said he wasn’t sure but after telling him it was compulsory as he was in the Juneathon house, he relented and said apparently riding a bike was hard to forget and I said yes, it’s just like riding a bike, you never forget so he got on one of Shaun’s mountain bikes and I got on my little Raleigh Shopper and Gary said are we going on the pavement or the road? and I said both and we cycled up the road, or at least I thought we cycled up the road, but it appeared that only I cycled up the road so I turned round and went back to see where Gary was and he said he was finding it difficult to balance after so many years and I said what happened to riding a bike being like riding a bike? and I went on ahead but when I got to the end of the road he was once again nowhere to be seen so I went back and he was wheeling the bike down the road and he said the pedals weren’t working properly and he’d see me back at the house and so I cycled home and told Shaun his bike wasn’t working and he went out to investigate and I said is Gary just being a wuss? and he said no, the chain’s come off and I think hmm, suspicious, Gary probably sabotaged the bike so he didn’t have to Juneathon.  Bad Gary.

Juneathon 2009 Day 15 – I still want to ride my bicycle

You may have noticed that there’s a gap in my Juneathon dates.  Is it because I’ve been too knackered to blog after Juneathoning my little heart out?  Nope.  It’s because I’ve been feeling a bit ropey and haven’t had any energy to do anything.  Except walk to the wine shop which I’m not sure I can count for Juneathon, especially as that was only a one way walk, after getting dropped off there in the car.

But today after getting up and still feeling ropey, a little while later I felt a bit more human and decided to go out on my bike to see if it energises me a bit.  And it did.  Although I was feeling very wobbly when I got back into the house, but Juneathoned I have, and Juneathon will continue.

Stats Juneathon day 12 (cycling)
Distance: 0.96 miles
Time: 9:04
Speed: 6.4mph
Calories: 37
Garys staying over: 1
Garys successfully Juneathoning: 0
Bikes with chains suspiciously coming off: 1
Juneathon’s completed: 12/30

Stats Juneathon day 15 (cycling)
Distance: 4.93 miles
Time: 30:37
Speed: 9.7mph
Calories: 146
Juneathon’s completed: 13/30

Juneathon week 2 stats (running, cycling, walking)
Distance: 48:03 miles
Time: 6:48:29
Calories: 2,166
Rowing machine
Distance: 2 miles
Time: 50 minutes
Calories: 80

Today I had planned a 3 mile run but after drinking too much wine last night to recover from actually doing some work yesterday I woke up feeling a bit  the worse for wear and as Shaun had asked me if I could go to the Post Office to pay the electricity bill if I could find some time in between playing on Facebook working really hard, I decided to cycle down there and come the long way back.

I’m brave and cycle all the way to the Post Office in the road but the Post Office is on the other side of the road and I don’t know how to get across the road on my bike and I can hear a bus behind me and the lights are on red and I can hear the bus slow down and then the lights turn green and the bus speeds up and overtakes me and it’s not a bus, it’s a lorry and I go onto the pavement and lock my bike up and cross the road and go to the Post Office and pay the electricity bill and then I go to the cashpoint to get some money to spend in the pub tonight and at Donington tomorrow when I go to stand in a field all day and watch Faith No More and I cross back over the road and my bike’s still there and I unlock it and it falls over and I hope no one notices or hears the loud crashing sound it made and I pick it up and cycle up the pavement and a woman stops to let me go past and she says sorry and I say sorry too and I wonder why she’s saying sorry as I shouldn’t be on the pavement anyway and I get to the road where the library is and I cycle up the road and  lock my bike outside the library and go in to pick up a book I ordered and I go round the corner and cycle the long way home.

Stats (cycling)
Distance: 2.73 miles
Time: 24:53
Speed: 6.6mph
Calories: 101
Electricity bills paid: 1
Library books picked up: 1
Weight: 9st 2
Juneathon’s completed: 11/30

I did wonder whether hoovering counted for Juneathon, after all, it is exercise I don’t usually do but somehow rashly promised to do the hoovering every Friday.  Duh.  But I decided that hoovering doesn’t count but after hoovering I would reward myself by going to the wine shop and so then I wondered if going to the wine shop counted and I decided it didn’t so I decided to go up the road and then back down to the wine shop on my bike and that would count.  So I free my trusty little steed from it’s garage prison and go up the road and decide to carry on a bit further and then I think oh shit I forgot the lock and I wonder how likely it is that my bike will get stolen in the two minutes I’m going to be in the wine shop and then I think the wine shop is next to the bike shop and what if someone tries to buy my bike and the bike shop man lets them? and then I think well, I could go in and get the lock key, seeing as I’m going to be going past the house anyway but then I think I can’t be bothered with going back in and so I’m brave and cycle down to the wine shop and stand it up on its little stand and hope it doesn’t fall over so I look like a complete muppet in front of everyone (well, two) people in the wine shop but it doesn’t fall over and I get my wine and my bike hasn’t been stolen and I wheel it up the hill because I’m a wimp and go home, having legitimately completed Juneathon.

Stats (cycling)
Distance: 2.90 miles
Time: 21:57
Speed: 7.9mph
Calories: 89
Weight: 9st 5
Juneathon’s completed: 5/30

Tonight is the Crisis Square Mile Run which is a run to help the homeless and not just an excuse to run with your mates for half an hour or so and then go and get pissed and eat pizza, and which I’m going to be doing for the fourth time.  As I now live far far away just left of the middle of nowhere, the report will have to wait until tomorrow.  In the meantime, you can read the previous years’ reports here (which was my first ever race), here and here.

But because I am a dedicated and committed Juneathoner, and of course extremely hardcore, I took my trusty little steed out for a short spin.  Shorter than anticipated but a short spin nevertheless.

Once again, I am true to my hypocrisy (as ever so kindly pointed out by Emma) and cycle up the pavement but then I see an old lady walking towards me and there aren’t any more slopey bits that I can go down and go on the road and so I slow down and stop while the old lady passes me as I don’t want to run into her like I ran into the man the other day and I manage not to run the old lady over and then I go over a stone and I think oops, hope I don’t get another puncture like I did the very first time I took my bike out and I get to the turning and there’s a sign saying warning, hedge cutting taking place or something like that I look down and there’s a big hedge cutting thing taking up the whole of the road and I think how the fuck am I supposed to get past that? and I think I can’t and so I turn round and go back home and I cycle in the road and there’s a car wanting to turn into his driveway and I wonder if I should stop for it and let it go in but I don’t know anything about roads and so I carry on and then I hear something big about to overtake me and it’s a huge lorry and I think bollocks to this, I’m going back on the pavement but I see the old lady up ahead and I think she’s going to get really pissed off if I keep going past her on the pavement and so I stay on the road and get home without running over any old ladies.

Stats (cycling)
Distance: 0.96 miles
Time: 6:07
Speed: 9.4mph
Calories: 27
Hedge cutting things: 1
Huge lorries: 1
Old ladies run over: 0
Weight: 9st 3
Juneathon’s completed: 4/30