I want to ride my bicycle...

So I did, on Saturday, although somewhat unintentionally. I packed the bike into my car to take over to my mothers with me, with the sole intention of doing some work to it. The bike itself was given to me a little while ago, needing a full strip down and rebuild. I quite like doing things of this nature, as you may have gathered since I spend just about every weekend restoring a 76 mini, so saw this as another little project to keep me busy over summer. I never thought at the time of taking a "before" picture, but here it is mid build;

Hanging in the professional and clinically clean confines of my shed, complete with decorative antique shovel and old bed frame, whilst the various components dried following the respray...
and here is the end result, all painted and put back together. This has been an extremely cheap little project for me (which is good as the mini frequently empties my pockets), with the only bought items, aside from bearings and paint, being the reproduction stickers courtesy of eBay, a set of hand grips, the bull bars which also conceal multi-tools inside them (fancy!), a set of mud guards, and a basic trip computer, all thanks to Halfords, for less than £100! Bargain! I can't actually remember what model the bike is, as I never thought to pay any attention before stripping all the paint off of the frame, but I think it's a Giant Advantage... or something like that. Plans for the future are to fit it with a set of disk brakes, but as these don't come cheap, they will have to wait. Ye olde V brakes and rubber stop blocks work perfectly fine.

So anyway, Saturday. Well since the rebuild I have been on a couple of short rides, but have been having trouble getting all gears, and since all my tools are in my mums hallway / pantry / loft / bedroom (sorry mum, I will shift it all one day I promise) it made sense to work on the bike there. After tinkering, I decided to take it round the street (with my mum watching from the kitchen window, just like a child) to give it a test... and immediately rode into an overhanging rose bush. Nice. Once I started riding I just carried on, dressed quite inappropriately in a pair of old jeans, skate trainers and a baseball cap.

So here's the route I took:
A relatively sedate route along the canal and back via the local scenery, racking up a gentle 5.5miles in 28 minutes. The weather was nice albeit very windy, in every direction, which defies everything I ever thought I knew about wind. I really enjoy a bit of cycling from time to time and wish I made more effort to get out a bit more frequently, but I must confess to being a bit of a fair weather fairy when it comes to the great outdoors, snowboarding aside. The reason for this enjoyment, it seems, is that I have never grown up, and insist on taking the most difficult way of getting past any obstacle that doesn't have teeth, usually by jumping off or over it. This inevitably ends in injury from time to time, but I doubt I'll learn my lesson any day soon. Another thing about cycling is that no matter how far from home you get, short of getting a taxi back, I have to get home again, so quitting when I get a bit tired just isn't an option. One thing I hate however, is roads, especially pothole ridden excuses for roads. And traffic, well, bad or inconsiderate drivers more accurately, but I could go on about this forever, so instead I avoid the subjects all together and try to stick to off-road routes where ever possible. Plus it's more fun.

I really enjoyed this little re-emergence into my long gone youth, despite being dressed like I'd stolen the bike from someone still very much in their youth, so I have intentionally left it at my mums. We're all off to a wedding on Saturday you see, so while my sisters are fighting over the bathroom and arguing about who's wearing who's shoes, I shall be exploring more of the the countryside at speed before donning my suit and getting drunk.


And now for something completely different

A couple of blogs ago I vented spleen about a reoccurring stitch which has been plaguing me recently, and at the time said that I didn't know what caused them or how I can prevent them. Well, our good friend Google came to the rescue with this, and as it turns out there has been quite a lot of research into this over recent years, and the general consensus seems to conclude that they are caused by the stretching of the ligaments that hold you liver in place, which attach to the diaphragm. The action of running combined with rapid breathing causes the liver to "bounce" downwards whilst the diaphragm is moving upwards stretching the ligaments, causing shooting pains. But I'm sure you all knew this already. As it turns out, there is no magic cure to fix a stitch in the making, but apparently I can prevent them by working on my core muscles. So I've decided that on my rest days between the treadmill / running sessions, I'll spend 45 minutes up in the gym corner of my bedroom, concentrating mainly on abdominal exercises, with a few other bits and pieces thrown in for good measure.
This began last night with 50 sit ups, I lost count but I'd say between 150 and 200 trunk dips with a 20kg weight, 10 elevated push ups, 1o regular push ups, 20 narrow grip chin ups, 5 wide grip chin ups, and a mixture of bench presses, bicep curls, weighted lunges and lateral raises. That's made me sweat a little bit just recalling last nights effort!!

Result? I ache today. Lots. Ah well, my exercise diary on mapmyrun is looking good this week. Next up is 5 laps around the reservoir. Looking forward to it I am. Confident, I am not.