Earlier this week, on New Year’s Day, I had an almost magical bike ride with Becky who is my eldest daughter. This was the first proper bike ride in 8 months! A couple of days ago I had a slightly shorter trial ride and this was absolutely fine, thereby spurring me on for today’s ride.
We benefitted from the calm, dry, mild weather. Becky being “up for a bike ride” and with some eagerness on my part, these were all the ingredients of a short, 8.8mile ride. And it was lovely, I felt so good afterwards.
We did a circular route from Dunstable, touched the edge of Kensworth and then up to the Dunstable Downs Visitor Centre before dropping back down into Dunstable. Actually we bumped into Rachel and Hannah there!
There were a couple of short, steep hills and we managed these alright (although Becky was a little faster than me). I did a fair amount of huffing and puffing, a little out of breath once I’d got to the top and I thoroughly enjoyed myself.
I was on my Thorn Audax bike and Becky was using one of Hannah’s two bikes. It is a hybrid bike and made up of lots of odd parts thrown together. Other than the soft and weak Weinmann centre pull brakes, it all works fine which is pretty amazing when you see the hotch potch of components on the tatty and very dated steel Falcon frame.
Although I managed the ride alright, knew I was rather slow but then I haven’t used my cycling muscles all this time. Not just my legs, as I could feel my core abdomen muscles were trying to do their bit, especially as we cycled up hill. It is times like this when you realise how cycling is more than just using your leg muscles.
Once back home I felt so good, I really mean that; perhaps a little dose of endorphins? Nevertheless it has spurred me on to cycling more this year. With that horrible tube inside me for most of 2018 cycling was simply off limits but now I’m free of that and who knows what might develop again this year….
Oh, once we were back home, we needed to do a little work in the garage. We have a family joke about making sawdust. Anyway, it was such a pleasure doing this with Becky, it reminded me of times gone by when we would do some little wood-based projects such as making some furniture for dolls to use. Now that’s going back about 12 years, at least. Very tender times and a lovely start to the new year.
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