Lockdown, Part 27: A need to recalibrate - and a sense of foreboding

I suppose if you really want to know what's bugging me it's my lack of cycling. I completed my last full week on Tuesday just passed having riden just 74.7 miles. The previous week I'd covered around 83 miles and this week, well, let's not talk about it. After last Tuesday, when I noted the 74.7 miles, I took my traditional day off on Wednesday, meaning I needed to ride Thursday through Tuesday (this coming Tuesday) to build up a reasonable mileage. But no, it wasn't to be: there was rain on Thursday and Friday and while I managed between 27 and 30 miles on Saturday, I didn't go out today (Sunday 14th June) leaving me just tomorrow and Tuesday to up the ante, but it will only be by 30-odd miles meaning, at best, this week's total will be 60 miles. It's not good and I can't say I'm happy about it. In a nutshell I need to get my act together.

Andy leaving the churchyard last weekend...

Yesterday I almost rode to the lakes, which was good. I was in the saddle from 0910hrs until around noon, so almost three hours and I must have averaged around 12 miles/hour so I'm guessing I put in around 27 to 30 miles. My iphone ran out of power so I couldn't rely upon Strava to give me an accurate mileage, but I know I'm in that ballpark. And now I'm sounding like a Lycra monkey obsessing about miles and my Strava.

Not cycling bugs me a lot and I'm prone to fretful thinking. I've noticed that all my fretfulness revolves around achievement (or lack of it). It's a kind of obsession and it used to be much worse than it is now. I mean, up until lockdown I cycled twice a week at most, which could mean anything from a mere 30-odd miles per week to, at best, 66 miles if Andy and I managed, say, three trips to Westerham (at roughly 22 miles per trip). The latter, of course, was extremely rare and could only really happen if there was a bank holiday. Invariably, we'd average 32 miles a week and the rest of the time we'd be working and I'd probably get a couple of walks in at the office. I say 'at the office' but I mean in the surrounding area, clocking up a couple of miles on each walk.

We're all eating too much...

But because, since lockdown, I've been riding daily I think that's why when I don't ride for a few days I start to feel guilty and I shouldn't. But try telling me that, as I do every time the dilemma arises. I just don't listen to myself and I'm not listening now as I write this. 

A bit of armchair escapism!

It's crucial that I do get the exercise. Lockdown's fine, but it involves staying in most of the day; there's no 'lunch break' walk with Paul, no wander around the shops. I tend to spend most of my day confined to a desk, sitting down, so when I don't get that bike ride it's not good, especially when you consider that there are more chocolate bars in my life and more apple pies with custard. Pre-lockdown they were both rare and they need to be rare again, but they were counteracted by the daily cycling, the 100 miles per week that I was doing for four consecutive weeks. Miss a day or two and I start to feel sluggish, fat, heavy, whatever you want to call it.

The weekend weather has been very pleasant. Yesterday's ride along Pilgrim's Lane towards Longford Lake was idyllic. There was sunshine and blue skies and scented hedgerows, it was wonderful. I stopped at the end of Ovenden Road and turned back towards the churchyard where I was meeting Andy. We both estimated my ride to be 'in the high twenties', meaning it could have been anything from 27 miles to 30. I'm gunning for an average speed of 12 miles per hour, meaning 30 miles, but I reckon the reality is probably 28, bearing in mind that had Strava been on, that's what it would have been. I'm guessing, of course, and my plan next weekend, weather permitting, is to leave the house around 30 minutes earlier and head for the lakes. I might even have breakfast there: a small dish of Alpen, a slice of bread and some tea would be amazing, sitting there in the early morning sunshine on a mid-June day just admiring my surroundings. Let's see.

I'm getting a sense of foreboding about things and I don't know why. It's the lockdown and the uncertainty of the future I think. I was driving to the coast this morning and it was bugging me. I think I need a holiday. I need to be in one of those houses on the beach down at Felpham on the Summerley Estate, just a week, although two would be better, doing nothing but reading and walking and possibly even swimming in the sea.

I was remembering times on the beach with my pal Andy back in the eighties. We'd go in swimming and then we would head for the Castle Tandoori in Arundel, the whole thing was a laugh from start to finish, but these days I notice I'm no longer laughing and that's for many reasons not least the awful news we've been subjected to these past four years: Trump being elected the leader of the free world, Boris Johnson being the Prime Minister of England (the least deserving and truly awful leader this country has had since, er... oh, his pal David Cameron, who many commentators have branded the worst Prime Minister in British history (they're not wrong, but I'm sure Boris might take that prize too). Then there was Brexit, engineered by that cock-a-like cunt Cummings. And now the fucking virus that has basically fucked everything, although I'd love to discover that David Icke was right all along and the whole thing was some kind of hoax. If that ever came to light I wouldn't be able to stop laughing, seriously, but it won't ever happen, let's face it.

Lastly, the protests over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, USA. They're all making out that Floyd is some kind of saint when we all know that the man was a criminal. Fine, he didn't deserve to die over a fake $20 bill and that, of course, is the argument, which I totally understand, but why there are protests in the UK I don't know. This is not a racist country. Yes, there are racist incidents, of course there are, what country avoids them? But I wouldn't say black people or Asian people or anybody gets a particularly rough ride over here. I mean that's why there are so many boats crossing the English Channel full of migrants: everybody wants a piece of the UK - until the realise what a shithole it's become. Unbridled immigration has caused problems and one of them, of course, is Brexit.

So I'm looking out on my garden, the sun is shining, it's 1931hrs and I'm thinking of walking off an apple and blackberry pie I've just eaten, not to forget the Madagascan Vanilla custard. As I've said, it's got to stop, especially if my cycling is sloping off a bit. Next week the bike goes in for a service and a clean. The front brake has been buggered for many weeks, but can I find a cycle shop that will just take it in and fix it? No I can't, so it's got progressively worse. Andy took a look at it when I arrived at the churchyard yesterday and he thinks I might need a new disc too. Well, so be it, I thought.

Putting the bike in for repair, of course, means no riding from Saturday next week for a few days so I need to make the most of next week. I know there's rain floating around, but I'm just going to get done what I can and hope that will satisfy me. I hope that disc is alright, but I'm not going to fret about it.

It was great on the beach today. I love it down there. It's the only place that I feel real, relaxed, at peace with the world and somehow immortal, or at least full of life. I don't know why that is, probably because I have a lot of happy memories from my childhood holidays along that stretch of coastline. For me it's a house with a garden, with a gate at the end of it and beyond that the sea.