OUCH

I went out for a run Wednesday lunchtime, something I do regularly throughout the winter. As usual for about 45-50 minutes, as always cross country – never on the road and as usual poochie came too. I never take him running on a lead and he normally does about twice the distance I do before collapsing on his mat in the living room. I don’t usually push it, the purpose is just to keep the fitness ticking over so in 45 mins I reckon to do about 4 to 4 ½ miles.

Wednesday, however, may have been a run too far. The ground was mushy with a thick layer of leaves and I was slipping about all over the place. I altered my route to avoid the worst of the mud and only stayed out for 35 minutes or so. When I got home my left knee hurt whenever I put any weight on it but did feel better later on. This was probably a result of either slipping about in the mud of running on uneven ground when you can’t see what’s there. It’s been fine since when just walking around although occasionally there’s a twinge behind the knee cap and getting up off the sofa can be…er….interesting.

So. Whinge over. But I went out for a test ride on the track bike today after fitting a new chainset, seat post and (most importantly) wheels. Everything was fine until I backpedalled to stop and then OUCH. Manchester is 2 weeks away. Think I’ve got a problem?

Solutions on a postcard please.

Cabin Fever

Its four o’clock on a Saturday afternoon less than 3 weeks before Christmas. Its been raining all day. Its been blowing about F7 all day and its freezing out and only a professional cyclist or a moron would go near their bike in this weather. What to do? There are a million and one things I should be doing, fixing a leaking radiator joint, tidying up, wrapping presents, even buying presents, painting the house or washing the car, not to mention all those bike repair jobs I’ve been putting off for weeks since the season has ended.

But what am I doing? Writing a blog entry, that’s what. Nutty daughter is upstairs wrapping presents for Mrs. Kipper and self using paper, tape, scissors and labels provided on the house before buggering off to paint the town with Swiss Dave, whose just spent the last fifteen hours installing Firefox, RSS and some other whatnot onto my computer so it does what I want as opposed to what it wants when I turn it on. No don’t ask me, I have no idea, but it does stuff it didn’t before and I’ve finally lost all of those irritating adverts.

I’ve got cabin fever. I’m bored with my new computer setup, even though it works better than ever before and I’ve loads of new toys on it. I’m bored listening to Gillian Welch. I’m even bored with Google Earth and the Astana team website. Quite how one can be bored web surfing is beyong me, but I seem to have managed it. After all there’s even a www.iamboredr.com website among many others! I’m too bored to pick up my guitar. Even the dog looks bored and the turbo is glaring menacingly from the conservatory. Perhaps I should dig out a razor blade and some old Leonard Cohen records and make a proper job of it.

Oh. Sod it. I’m gonna go and make a pizza.